Category: Leadership

Do You Suck at Setting Boundaries?

5/23/2017

I come from a background where it was not encouraged for women to set healthy boundaries. In the nonprofit cultures of my time, very much influenced by baby boomer culture, I saw people literally contorting themselves to make things happen. They had minimal resources to try to accomplish things that did not seem humanly possible. Best of luck if you tried to set healthy boundaries in these cultures. Doing so often resulted in subtle backlash from those that saw themselves as "truly" fighting the fight. Unfortunately, this dynamic quickly led to burnout, resentment and unhealthy work cultures.

Learning to set my own boundaries has been one of the most enlightening things. It has also been one of the hardest. Brené Brown, the world’s top vulnerability researcher, said something very profound once about boundaries. She said simply that in all her research, she’s found that the most boundaried people were also the most compassionate. In her book Rising Strong, she makes the case for setting boundaries and posits that resentment comes from giving up our power unwillingly. If the world’s most renowned researcher on vulnerability is telling us this, then why does it feel so hard to find it in the surf–life metaphor? Can you still be one who goes with the flow and also be a little “square” and set boundaries?

Life is like a wave. Ride it. Expect ups and downs. OK. Got that.

If you don’t like the wave, change your equipment (i.e., your internal surfboard) or get off the wave. OK. Check. Already made that metaphor once.

And, oh yeah: Learn to recognize and set boundaries to have a more fulfilling life. Umm, hold up! Exactly how does that translate into my sea of oceanic metaphors? A buoy? Filling up a plastic pool with ocean water? Isn’t this some Western, man-made, left-brained concept? How do you overlay the concept of boundary onto something that has flow at the core of its philosophy? The more I explored this boundary stuff, I realized even the coolest of cool cultures (e.g., surf culture) sets boundaries ALL THE TIME.

Most surfers go online now to check surf and ocean conditions through sites that list current and predicted surf conditions. These are based on a number of factors like wind, buoy readings etc. When it gets big, as in double to triple overhead in a Northern California report, you often find the reporter ending their summary with the following: “Be safe and know your limits,” a fair warning to surfers that conditions may warrant a particular degree of experience and skill. It occurred to me that when we look at that report, or scan conditions of the ocean ourselves, we are making a conscious decision of whether to go or not to go, taking steps to protect our safety. And that’s when it all made sense to me:

The concept of exercising boundaries is actually more about accessing your own internal wisdom, listening and getting clear with what you are or are OK or not OK with in a situation, or relationship. It’s less about anything tangible at all.

As surfers, we set boundaries all the time (well, at least I do). In a culture where it’s rewarded to keep pushing the boundaries on things, it’s no wonder why we as people have a hard time setting them in normal life. After all, boundaries don’t sound particularly sexy—they are the opposite of edgy. They’re very square. But they are so necessary to living and leading in a healthy way. Even extreme athletes, for all they surmount, have their own boundaries. And they differ from person to person. What’s OK for them may certainly not be OK for me.

OK so how does this relate to you? If you feel resentment towards something or feel too accommodating, perhaps in a relationship, I invite you to look at how you are setting your boundaries. Below, I offer you a few ways to think about boundary-setting.

1. Realize when something is off.

Oftentimes, when we can tune into when something does or doesn’t feel right in a relationship, situation or interaction, that is a sign that we know a boundary needs to be set. Perhaps it is the colleague suffering from a compulsion to make snarky comments that make you feel bad. Or perhaps it’s that friend that always flakes out on a plan at the last minute, leaving you high and dry (and annoyed). Again. If it doesn’t feel right to you, chances are you need to look at it and set a boundary with that person, thing or relationship.

2. Name it.

If something doesn’t feel right or feels off, name what feels off. Is it a value that is being stepped on? Is too much being asked of you? Are you feeling overly accommodating in a relationship? If you can name exactly what it is that feels off to you, then you will be more empowered to know exactly what boundary you need to set. An extreme example: I have a friend who abruptly ends calls with her friends the minute she feels her energy is being sapped. Though this is an example of a more extreme boundary, it’s a boundary nonetheless, and she’s clear with herself what’s not OK for her. (I like to use extreme examples because they are easier to remember).

3. Communicate…or not.

Sometimes, setting boundaries requires clear communication with someone, and sometimes you can set boundaries without having to communicate at all, simply by changing your behavior. My favorite segue I learned from one of my coaches for communicating a boundary is simply to say: “X,Y,Z doesn’t/didn’t work for me. Here’s what does.” Boom - A simple and powerful way to get your boundary across without sounding needy or complaining.

4. Set your boundary.

I had friends that would religiously cancel plans on a whim at the last minute. It would drive me nuts, as I would have blocked off time for them in my schedule only to have them cancel, and it would be too late for me to make other plans. Here’s what I say now: “Just want to confirm our plans for tomorrow. Let me know by X PM if we are a go.” That way, it gives them the out to cancel, and if they do, I have sufficient time to plan something else.

Be kind to yourself. Many of us didn’t come from backgrounds where it was appropriate to state and defend our boundaries, and so it is very difficult and scary for us to do so. If you sense something is up with someone—a partner, employee, friend, boss—don’t be afraid to ask into it, and create a safe space for people to share what’s up. Perhaps you might have crossed an unstated boundary without realizing it. Opening up vulnerable and authentic communication can help you both realize the boundaries that are important to you.

Where have you had to set better boundaries? How did you do it?

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Indian Dance and the Art of Leadership: My One Favorite Lesson

4/24/2017

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Photo Credit: Naveen Nelapudi

When I was 20, I was bitten by the classical Indian music and dance bug. Before I knew it, I found myself with a one-way ticket out to Northern California to study with one of the last living masters* of Kathak. Kathak is a dance discipline made up of mathematically precise footwork, swift pirouettes and storytelling. Our teacher was always known for his speed and agility, training us with the utmost rigor and repetition. When people would visit the class, he would pride himself on how hard he’d work us, often pushing us, for example, to execute 108 swift pirouettes in a row without pause. At one point, I remember I spun so out of control I knocked over the halogen lamp in the Fulton and 3rd Ashram in San Francisco where we used to train. Speed and fierceness were high values, and to just keep going, no matter what, was often the lesson. There were times we’d be on a roll, and nothing could stand in our way, egos flying high, adrenaline pumping from the percussive beats and all-around good workout. And then, he’d do the one thing that would completely fuck our shit up: He’d slow everything down.

All of a sudden, everything we had trained our bodies to do in relation to executing a composition at a certain speed went out the door. If I had to give you a surfing metaphor for what this was like, it was akin to surfing a thin, hollow wave over a pure reef break on a shortboard, feeling the split second stability of the board that a powerful wave might offer on takeoff, and then suddenly finding yourself on a completely different wave - one that is slow, flat, lazy, and weak, but having to surf with the same board - without being allowed to paddle. All of a sudden, with everything weaker and slower, the board feels wobbly in the weak surf. But now you need some type of precision and skill to make it work in those conditions.

Deep inside, I knew this was my teacher’s way of truly testing how well we knew the compositions and how solid of a grasp we had of taal (rhythm), one of the defining virtues on which the whole classical North Indian music structure is based. If the tempo were slowed down, we really HAD to understand the composition, in a totally different way. We had to know precisely where each beat of the composition would land in the cycle of rhythm AND make conscious adjustments to the composition and relate it differently to the underlying rhythmic cycle. We suddenly needed to shift from unconscious competence into a space of being conscious of what we were doing. This required us to be ever more precise given the space of in-between we were now given. Aside from the “be prepared for what life may throw at you” lesson, there was another lesson in this, too. First, a little neuroscience.

Let’s start with brain waves. We have 5 known speeds of brain waves—beta, alpha, theta, delta and gamma. Whether we are mentally active, resting or asleep, our brain always has some level of electrical activity. Beta, for example, is where we function most of the day when we are “doing” something, like when we are in our task-positive network. Delta is our slowest wavelength, generated in dreamless sleep and in the deepest of meditation. As my coaching colleague pointed out, the slower our brain waves, the more time we have between thoughts (just as we have more time between beats in a composition when the tempo slows.) The more mindful we can be about our thoughts and actions, the more conscious we become of them. But wait! There’s more! --The slower the brain waves, the more the right and left hemispheres of the brain communicate! So when the tempo of life slows, it forces more awareness and consciousness AND, quite possibly, a more optimal environment for brain integration. I know - Holy Mother of Kali!

In thinking about this lesson from classical Indian dance, I couldn’t help but wonder what we miss as leaders when we don’t slow down. By slowing down, we are literally allowing more space between thoughts and creating a more optimal internal environment for conscious, thoughtful decision making. In fact, if you think about it, slowness has virtues not just in the leadership realm. I recently decided to slow down my eating and to chew as much as possible, to consciously be aware of the food I was eating to nurture my body. As a result, my entire experience of eating changed. For one, I become fuller with less food AND I actually enjoy the food more, reveling in every bite and taste. I am also WAY more present to the eating experience.

I do not mean to say that speed doesn’t have its virtues, or that quick decisions are always bad, nor do I mean to imply to ignore our intuitive hits. However, to slow down a process while still maintaining balance and grace is something of an art. It requires awareness, consciousness and precision. In the case of dance, it was the necessary training ground that would serve to distinguish the technique and ability of a dance practitioner from the nuances and subtleties of a well developed artist.

Imagine what we’re missing when we’re always doing everything fast—from dating, to eating, to running a business, to surfing only fast waves, or dancing only fast compositions. We’re short-changing the many capabilities, perspectives and details the structure of our consciousness offers, limiting how we see, feel and experience the world around us. We’re missing out on this rich space of "in between", and on the insights that come from having to break something down we know so well, and to be in it from a totally difference reference point. It’s no coincidence there is a surge of interest in Eastern traditions that have practices that slow us down. From yoga to meditation to, yes, classical Indian dance and music. These are not just new-agey, hippie-dippie things. We’re in a moment in our culture when we are actively seeking slow. In doing so, we are not just building optimal environments for better, more integrated brains, but, in my opinion, honing real leadership tools.

So to leaders out there, I challenge you to slow things down, but to first start with slowing down your own thoughts. You may, in the end, make better decisions and contribute to a more conscious and mindful world. Where do you need to slow it down a notch? What takes you to slow?

* The late Pandit Chitresh Das, master Kathak artist, teacher, and performer not only left behind a legacy of timeless teachings in his craft, but patterned the minds of those he touched deeply, cultivating new generations of artists, activists, thinkers, and leaders who continue to be inspired by his lessons and work.

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I Feel the Happiest I've Ever Been. Here's What I Did.

5/16/2016

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Let’s start with morning rituals. In the past year-and-a-half, I developed a morning ritual consisting of meditation, journaling and consciously assessing on a scale of 1-10 how happy I wake up on that day (10 being completely blissed out to the max, and 0 at a basic level of hopelessness). This may seem excessive and even weird, I know. (Those of you who really know me know that I am a little weird anyway!) But in the discipline of coaching, self care actually becomes a critical ally for being available and offering yourself at your highest level in service to your clients. That is the reason I focus on how I feel each morning so much.

Anyway, the process has trained me to be more aware of how I’m feeling in the moment. It has helped me to reflect on the circumstances, relationships or events that made me choose that number on a daily basis. This self-reflection, along with spending the past 4 years constantly reading up on the latest neuroscience research on happiness, inspired me to share my insights about happiness. Why is it that so many people who seemingly have everything – a thriving business, millions of dollars in the bank, a seemingly stable relationship – still rank low on their happiness index? What REALLY makes us happy? How can we bring more happiness into our lives?

1. Understand that your brain is plastic

Neuroplasticity is, simply put, the brain’s ability to change over time. And studies show we do actually have a happiness set point. In other words, no matter how much tragedy or what happens to us, we go back to a set point of happiness. (It’s the reason why, for example, there is no real change in one’s happiness set point before they win the lottery vs. after they win.)

Psychology says there are a few things you can do to increase your happiness baseline – namely, focusing on gratitude and service. Similarly, research shows that meditation grows areas in our brain associated with positivity (left hemisphere) and compassion (right hemisphere), which can also increase our happiness set point. In my experience, it IS possible to re-wire your happiness set point, if even just to give it a slight increase. So, start with the belief in your own neuroplasticity. Actually, it’s not just a belief - it’s neuroscience!

2. Feel the lows in order to feel the highs

Some days I have woken up and felt like a 7 in terms of happiness and have thought, Hey, I’m doing pretty good today. And then upon further reflection, that same morning I could also be in touch with a deep sadness about something. How can we be profoundly happy and at the same time profoundly sad about something? As self-awareness increases, our ability to identify and feel two perhaps very distinct feelings at once also becomes heightened. We become more aware of our integration. The sadness doesn’t trump my happiness per se, but they both exist in me at the same time.

Brené Brown, the touted TEDX speaker, was spot-on in her famous Ted Talk on vulnerability when she pointed out that when we suppress our negative emotions (depression, frustration, sadness, etc.), we end up suppressing the positive ones as well – joy, fulfillment, happiness. So to feel those high places, you absolutely need to take trips to the dark, deep, dank, hopeless emotions of your subconscious basement. I know – I hate going there as well … like HATE! But what I’ve discovered from being able to “be” with those hard emotions and to really feel the lows, is that it helped open up the space to experience the more positive emotions. Whether through coaching, group get-togethers, having an amazing friend with a keen ability to listen or even writing about these feelings, the more we can embrace this idea of feeling places that are not comfortable for us emotionally, the more we make space and open ourselves up to feeling the positive emotions of life.

For example, I started journaling a few years back as part of my daily routine. It helped pass so many feelings through me that today I don’t know what I would do without this journaling practice. I felt a visible improvement in my mood and happiness on a DAILY basis, simply from having daily self-reflection. Think of it like going to the bathroom; in the same way that you have to release stuff from your gut to clean out your system and make it available for more food and energy to process, reflection allows you to do the same cleaning with your brain. Heh heh. :)

3. Hum (I know it sounds weird, but trust me on this one!)

For this, you need to know about the vagus nerve, our 10th cranial nerve. The vagus nerve is fascinating and stimulating (literally), as it is the only nerve that connects to every major organ in the human body. If you haven’t Googled “vagus nerve,” you absolutely should because it is fascinating! So fascinating, it makes me want to start a t-shirt line in honor of its critical importance to our life force and evolution of consciousness and sell it in hipster card shops in Oakland!

Check it.

According to this article on vagus nerve stimulation, low vagal tone (an internal biological process referring to the activity of the vagus nerve, according to Wikipedia) has been linked to depression, inflammation, diabetes and other ailments. Humming (along with slow breathing and other things) was cited as a process that actually INCREASES vagal tone by stimulating the vagus nerve. After reading this, it hit me. I realized that I was ALWAYS humming SOMETHING. Walking in the grocery store, driving my car, cleaning the house and definitely while I was sitting on my surfboard, I always had a tune in my head that I quietly hummed to myself. Could it be that humming was responsible, in part, for my happiness?

Stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline and even dopamine) are released in us when we are at lower level resonating consciousness (the states of fear, hopelessness, frustration). Another way to think about this is that our pre-frontal cortex (PFC) or higher level thinking brain gets knocked "offline" and norepinephrine and dopamine (the two main chemicals balancing healthy function of the PFC) are then thrown off balance. By simply humming and constantly stimulating your vagus nerve, you increase vagal tone, and actually equalize some of the inflammatory hormones in the body. In other words, we are equipped with an internal stress regulator!

This is the scientific reason behind why something like chanting OM is associated with bringing in peace and resonance. It’s because it’s actually stimulating the vagus nerve and increasing our vagal tone. It’s why music, dancing, drumming and vibrations have played such a crucial role for us through the evolution of humanity and spirituality. So, the next time you feel a pang of anxiety come on, try humming. Try it when you are driving or walking. Just hum to yourself always. In fact, quit reading this and go and hum!

4. Protect yourself from toxic people

It took a lot of lessons – A LOT – to figure out how to spot toxic energy and people, and to make the conscious choice NOT to engage. Admittedly, I get swept away by some gnarly tides of energy; I am very sensitive to others and often find myself taking on their energy or emotional states via our mirror neuron process.

To assess and become aware of toxic energies, here’s a tool to use: Metaphor. For example, when I meet someone, I sometimes think of a metaphor of what it was like to be with that person in terms of ocean conditions. (Remember: metaphors are lint catchers for the brain; sometimes you can’t evaluate or see the relationship you are in, so tying it to a metaphor helps the brain see and latch on to your experience or process of it more quickly than just trying to use words to describe or make sense of it.) I ask myself, If this person were ocean conditions, what kind of conditions would they be? Ocean Beach on a crazy-ass day (strong current pulling me down the beach, rough shore break)? Or is the experience more like a fun day at Bolinas – a gentle bohemian enclave of a beach just north of San Francisco – predictable, stable and light? The metaphor process helps me figure out the stability of the energetic zone I’m relating to, or at least what the ride would potentially feel like down the road if I were in a relationship with a particular person.

Once you figure out what your metaphor is (it doesn’t have to be the ocean; maybe it could be movie genres – nightmare, fairy tale, dark comedy or cars – whatever tickles your fancy), figure out what your choices are. I love my surfing metaphor because it gives me 2 options:

1. Get off the wave if it is not the wave you want to be on, or if you just can’t handle it.
2. Change your equipment and try a more stable board and venture at it again (i.e. - equip yourself with a better set of tools and skills to deal with the toxic and unstable conditions by making yourself more stable).

That’s it – change something in yourself to deal with it, or get off it. Keep it clean. Now when I come into contact with a person, I am aware of how I feel, how my body reacts, and what wave I’m on. Use this for friends, business partners, relationships, etc.

These are a few hacks I picked up in life regarding the question of personal happiness. I hope some of them are helpful to you. What insights or practices have you found that have helped you cultivate happiness within yourself? Share your thoughts below!

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Surf Life Clients & Alumni Making Waves!

4/7/2016

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Congratulations to entrepreneur Helen Russell and Equator Coffees & Teas for winning the 2016 California Small Business of the Year Award!

Helen Russell, Co-Founder, Equator Coffees & Teas Photo: MattySF.com

Click here to read the award announcement.

Congratulations to artist Farah Yasmeen Shaikh, for worldwide press coverage on her dance drama about India’s most powerful woman!

Farah Shaikh, flourishing artist and creator of The Twentieth Wife Photo: Brooke Duthie

Farah came to Surf Life when she was at a crossroads as a dancer wondering how to make the leap from a trained student to making a career and living as an artist. We did a great deal of work on purpose and alignment together. Today, as a result of her hard work and courage, she is a now an accomplished artist with her own school who has also turned a novel about one of India's most powerful women into a full length work of art using dance, drama and storytelling - a great feat in finding her authentic voice in her art form and in life.

She says this about Surf Life: "Farhana helped me to break through the things that are holding me back and find the path to not just discovering, but living a life that is authentically me." Click here here for artistic highlights of her show.

Click here for her press accolade.

Congratulations to architect John Lum and his firm, John Lum Architecture, on being featured in California Home + Design!

John Lum, Founder, Owner and Principal Architect of John Lum Architecture

Click here to read feature.

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Growing Your Listening Skills Will Grow Your Leadership. Here's How.

12/14/2015

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I had a friend over for dinner the other week. I just finished giving her updates on my life, how my recent trip back East went, what was hard, what was new. After I finished, I was met with a “that’s good” type of response. Not much more. It was like talking into a well, with no feedback, affirmation, insights, commiserating … nothing. Then, she launched into her updates, and I spent the remainder of the evening listening, supporting, ad-hoc coaching, and offering feedback to her on her relationships and challenges.

Reflecting on the evening, I felt a little sad and, truth be told, a little used. Why is it so hard for someone to listen thoughtfully and to let me know I’ve been heard? I listened to her; why can’t she show me that she’s actively listening to me? All of this got me thinking about what makes someone a good listener.

Let’s start with recognizing what it is to not listen well.

You are quick to interrupt.

You are quick to hear someone and you generally interrupt them to offer a thought or response before they can finish what it is they are saying. This shows you are not holding space to sufficiently take in what you hear. Rather, you are already trying to craft an answer, rebuttal, opinion, or respond before fully listening. Note: if you are a coach, you may be taught to intrude for the purpose of keeping your client on track, but for the rest of you, you probably aren’t listening well if you continually interrupt.

You overshare.

You take up 80% of the space in your conversations. You are concerned with expressing yourself and making sure you get heard but leave little room for others.

You tend to multitask while someone is talking.

Unless you are knitting, walking, or doing something that takes unconscious competence to do, chances are you are not fully listening to the other person when you are doing something else at the same time. It is impossible to be a good listener if you are typing an e-mail or reading the news on your phone. The brain does not multitask; it can only do one thing at a time. Although you may think you are successfully doing many things at once, in actuality your brain is switching back and forth from task to task and your attention is being divided.

You self-reference.

You automatically apply what someone is saying to your own situation. In other words, you don’t take the time to show you are understanding what they are saying and feeling. Instead, you bring the conversation back to you and how you would feel if you were in their position. This is different from empathizing with someone, as you are not genuinely trying to understand the other person’s feelings as much as you are projecting your thoughts and feelings onto their situation.

See any of these behaviors in yourself? If so, you may have a great opportunity to grow your leadership skills by becoming a better listener.

In coaching, one of the first things we do is learn the 3 levels of listening. Level 1 listening is all about self-referencing per the example above. For example, if your friend says something, you immediately think of yourself and say, “Oh yeah, I remember when that happened to me." In other words, it’s all about referencing what someone is saying in relation to you and your experience. It’s not a bad level, per se. It is the level we probably most often encounter in our relationships. But it is not the most powerful level of listening.

Level 2 is when you can actually start to listen to someone and stop referring back to yourself. You really hear what it is they are trying to say. You are focused on them and not on yourself.

And level 3 is about listening to all the things that are NOT being said, but that are present in a conversation - the energy of the person, their intonation, what you are hearing between the words, what your intuition tells you. This is where you as a leader really have the power to achieve deeper understanding and, ultimately, effect better outcomes through listening.

Here are some tips for achieving level 3 listening:

1. So what I’m hearing you say is …

This is a great phrase that sets you up for an attempt to understand and reiterate what it is you heard the other person say. If you are listening well, you should be able to sum up what it is you think the person is trying to say. You can also use other versions of this phrase, such as: It seems like … I hear you. It sounds like … Using any of these phrases will not only help you synthesize what you just heard, but will indicate to the other person that you are truly trying to understand what they are saying..

2. That’s curious. How did that make you feel? …

Being curious about what the other person says will help you listen better. Asking them how something made them feel can help them reflect more on what it is they are saying and also give you another angle to understand what it is they are trying to say.

3. Simply ask those around you whether they think you are an effective listener.

If it’s a “no,” or you get a wishy-washy response because they are afraid to tell you the truth, ask, “How could I improve?” You’ll be surprised at what they say. Maybe they will tell you not to interrupt so much when you didn’t realize you were doing that. Maybe they need a nod or more eye contact from you. Maybe they just need an acknowledgement of some sort. If you don’t ask, you won’t know!

Challenge yourself in your next conversation: go in with the intention of listening and making the other person feel heard. Challenge yourself to not respond, offer advice, or self-relate until the person is finished speaking. See how long you can go just listening!

As you practice better listening, you’ll likely gain new insights about yourself and about the person you are listening to. Getting curious while listening can prompt you to ask the right questions for solving problems and demonstrates that you are truly present in the interaction. Most of all, growing your listening is growing your leadership.

Try these listening tips and leave a comment below about the differences you notice in your conversations!

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Feeling Down? Try This.

7/18/2015

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Dealing with the highs and lows of change is inevitable. I’ve seen competent executives with PhDs get moved to tears because they feel totally incompetent at what they are doing, entrepreneurs on an emotional roller coaster because they lost a good lead and their cash flow is screwed for the month. I’ve also seen people in transition feeling really low because they were a leader and powerful professional at work, and now the people they once did business with won’t even call them back.

And of course there is just the occasional funk, when you just don’t feel so great (like the one I was in last week). We all go through our ups and downs, but how can we try to stay more “above the line” as we would say in coaching – in more resonant and positive emotions when we’re not feeling so great? Here’s what I’ve learned along the way that I’d like to share with you.

1.    Normalize Your Funk

The first thing to remember is that being in a funk is sometimes NORMAL. I had lunch with a dear friend from high school who is now a Harvard-trained practicing neuropsychologist. “What we forget is that it’s normal to have mood swings. We need to start to normalize the fact that we have a range of emotions,” she’d say. We can’t all be in a good, chipper mood all the time. Unfortunately, in today’s society, our moodiness can make us quick to start self-diagnosing – maybe I’m bi-polar, maybe I’m depressed, maybe there is something wrong with me. The truth of the matter is that we need to feel and be with ALL of our emotions. So if you get in a funk from time to time, normalize it, for you are part of the animal kingdom!

One of the principle points that celebrated psychology researcher Brené Brown makes in her TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is that when we suppress our vulnerable feelings like fear, shame and disappointment, it makes it impossible for us to feel the positive ones - like joy, gratitude and happiness. (Side note: if you are convinced you feel no emotion, you ARE suppressing your emotions. Get help accessing and feeling them!) Seen the new Pixar move Inside Out yet? Remember at the end when Joy, after trying to keep Sadness from “touching” any of the core memories, finally lets Sadness “touch” some of them? It’s because she realizes that sadness is a necessary emotion to the human experience. If sadness is suppressed, joy cannot be felt. So, embrace your funkiness. What I mean by that is to feel it. Be with it.

2.    Celebrate New Wins

Unfortunately, our brains are velcro for negative experiences and teflon for the positive experiences. So when we have a negative experience, we tend to hold onto it.

Oftentimes, clients tell me of their wins for the week at the beginning of our conversations and then leap to all of the problems and what’s going wrong. They don’t dwell on their wins, elate in their wins, spend time with their wins. By not doing so, they compromise the benefits of sitting with a positive experience and what it can do for their brains. This is why they say you have to deliver 5 or 6 pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback. It’s the teflon/ velcro thing.

There have been days in my business where I have felt really low in terms of my progress. As an entrepreneur, I want everything done yesterday. When I can sit down and actually list all the accomplishments I’ve had at the end of the day, or in a week, I automatically feel lifted up. When I focus on all the things I didn’t get done, I feel inadequate and like I am wasting time, which can lead to me to feel stressed and worried. So, when possible, focus on your wins.   If you search for the positive experiences and spend time with them, you train your brain to identify more positive experiences in the future. This is not to say you will not feel down about things, but training your brain to stay in your wins longer will make you more resilient for dealing with setbacks, processing feelings and then getting back on track! (Note: Studies show meditation is one of the ways to also build resilience among people who may be experiencing what we call below the line emotions.)

3.    Remember Your Past Wins

This is a sports psychology technique that one of my good buddies explained to me last year. When an athlete is down or disappointed from their performance, one of the ways to coach them is to get them to remember and recount their past wins. This activates the memories and wiring they associate with competence, success and accomplishment, and can greatly shift their mental state.

After closing C.E.O. Women, the non-profit I ran for 11 years, I initially felt pretty low. I had very little confidence in starting a new venture. At the time, I was working on setting up Brown Girl Surf, now a prominent, global women’s surf community. I saw it as sort of my “transition” work. I remember how much anxiety I had around it. In fact, much of my calls were around telling my coach all the reasons I wasn’t capable of doing the work for Brown Girl Surf. I believed that I had to be a good executor. Unfortunately, one of the last colleagues I worked with convinced me I was terrible at well, almost everything I did (she even criticized how I closed the door in our office), and especially so in the skills of sequencing, planning and execution – traits often associated with the left hemisphere of the brain. And the sad thing was that I actually LET myself believe her. I ended up convincing myself that I wasn’t good at execution, that I had done a lousy job starting and growing the organization, that I didn’t hire right.… the list went on and on. I'm sure this wasn't her intention (and this was before I understood how we project ourselves onto others to avoid responsibility) but the more she complained and placed blame on others for the challenges and shortcomings she faced, the more my morale fell. I forgot about all the things I did do right, the execution that went really well, and all the awesome hires that we did make throughout the year.

My coach at the time listening to me struggling and challenged my thinking. She asked me, on a scale of 1-10, how I rated myself in terms of executing at C.E.O. Women all those years. I know nothing was perfect and by all means I knew I had many areas in which to grow, but I gave myself an 8 or 9, taking into consideration context - the little resources we had, and the fact that this thing grew out of my bedroom with just $1,000, with no executive board, no clients, and few connections. At that point, I started to look at the bigger picture - the risks that were taken, the sacrifices that were made, and all the positive wins and successes my team and I had during that time as well as all the learnings along the way. It wasn't perfect but it made me feel like if I did all that at C.E.O. Women, I surely could build the Brown Girl Surf community. It also reminded me to always look at the bigger picture and context; one person putting down your skills should not negate all of your past wins or create mental blocks for future ones.

(By the way, today Brown Girl Surf is co-led by myself and Mira Manickam, another awesome leader. We have almost 3,000 global followers, have been covered in international media, and just got our first $40,000 grant to support programming for adolescent girls in the San Francisco Bay Area that will foster a more diverse and inclusive surf culture locally and around the world! And, our short documentary on India's first female surfer just got picked up by a MAJOR media platform and will be featured next month to its 8 million viewers around the world!)

4.    Connect with Others

Ever wonder why solitary confinement is used to punish people? The absence of connection - someone to talk to, someone to be seen by, is like slow death for the brain. There are a few things needed to have a healthy brain, and one of those is connection. Our bodies are directly impacted by our connection to others and to the outside world.

When women are down or go through a hard time, they may be more prone to look to connection to help lift them up. Sometimes the same is true of men, but more often than not, they will retreat to their man caves. This may be a necessary process. However, at some point connection and processing is important and can help lift you out of a funk if you’re in one. A simple phone call, going out to dinner with someone, or inviting them to go out for a coffee can dramatically shift your mood. For someone with anxious tendencies, talking with a secure person can often help move them back to more stability. As a coach, I do a lot of my work in isolation. I have had to plan how to get enough connection throughout my weeks so I am not just doing coaching sessions on the phone all day. I lead a weekly, in-person boot camp for executives in transition, make sure I get in surf time and connect with my friends on the break, do some face-to-face client meetings, and make sure I meet and talk to at least one new person a week. If I’m in a funk, I notice my mood dramatically improves when I reach out and connect with my network and friends.

5.    Self-Reflect

I once attended a women’s writing class every Monday. The goal was to do our shittiest writing possible, and through that process, the nuggets within our psyches would emerge and we could craft them into powerful writing. We would read each entry out loud to the group. We could write about anything that was on our minds. Some people wrote about their latest online date and getting picked up in a Maserati, while others had something to say about painful memories of being molested in their childhood. What was profound about the experience was that it allowed us to self-reflect as well as be witnessed by a group. Though it was a writing class, it sort of had a therapy-like effect on the group. People heard you. I would leave feeling so good, as if I had processed an experience and could better make sense of how to move forward from it.

Today, I make journaling an almost daily routine, putting aside time to let the feelings pass through. As a CTI (The Coaches Training Institute) coach, we are trained in something called process coaching. The theory behind process coaching is similar to Buddhist philosophy, in that when we have an emotion but do not feel it, the energy of the emotion becomes stuck or blocked inside us. Layers upon layers of blocking can build up. One thing we do as coaches is help our clients become present to their lives, to get them to FEEL their lives. By doing so, we take them down into their emotion to feel it so they can open up space for forward movement. I LOVE process coaching. It’s a highly unique approach to coaching, but hands down one of the most powerful approaches I’ve learned.

Fortunately, everything I preach I practice as well, and these are some of the techniques and learnings I share with my clients, whether they are moving into a new executive position, feeling the setbacks of starting their new business, or just feeling sad. Know that it’s normal. And also, sometimes just a good cry can do a brain good.   The sooner you FEEL your emotions, the sooner will pass them through. Train your mind to see your wins and focus on them. And give your brain the connection and self-reflection space it deserves to function optimally in service to your best life!

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4 Tips for When You Get Triggered

2/9/2015

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Last year, I wrote a post on what to do when someone around you gets triggered. In the spirit of good leadership, I’d like to spin it around this time and really focus on what to do when YOU are triggered in a situation.

What is a trigger?

Triggers are a little different than getting justifiably angry or emotional at something. The main difference is that triggers show up when something seemingly normal has a very strong impact on you, to the point where you might feel yourself lashing out or wanting to run and hide. (In other words, the reaction is disproportionate to the stimulus, as touted author and internationally known psychologist Daniel Goleman would say). Some people respond by fighting, and others respond by fleeing. Adrenaline and cortisol flood the body. All rational thought goes out the window. Simply put, your pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for higher executive thinking, is no longer in control. Your mammalian brain (amygdala), however, is. You ROAR! driven by your basic animal instinct. So the question is, how do we manage our triggers? We all get triggered by something at one time or another. Here’s a secret about skilled leaders: they know how to process, manage and recover quickly from a trigger. Here are some tips on how to get started.

1.    Become present to the feelings in your body & BREATHE!!!

Realizing you are triggered is the first step. Often, you’ll know because it will feel like your blood will start to boil. You may feel tightness in your jaw, or in your gut. I remember getting triggered once by an employee. I don’t remember what the trigger was, but I do remember the feeling – one of anger and frustration. My speech got terse and my neck tight. What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that I was triggered. So what can you do if this happens?

First, really become present with the feeling, and notice it. Notice where you might feel tense in your body (like your jaw or your neck might freeze up) and breathe into it. If you happen to find yourself getting triggered in a space like a meeting, take a break, give yourself some time to regain your composure, and then come back. Space is your friend. One technique that is really helpful for leaders is to say, “I don’t like how I’m showing up right now. I want to be at my best for this conversation. Let’s continue this discussion at another time.” Or, "That's an interesting idea. Let me check in with my other colleagues and I'll get back to you on this." Giving yourself space to be present to the feeling and breathing into it will help you manage it. Becoming self-aware of your triggers will slowly help you to manage them. Unless you have awareness of your triggers, you can’t address them.

2.    Do complex math

Well, not really. But counting is a very simple technique to use when you are being triggered. The advice says to count to 10. When you are triggered, your pre-frontal cortex gets hijacked by your mammalian brain, and you are essentially in fight or flight mode, our most basic, animalistic survival instinct. Counting activates the executive function of the brain. I started counting up in 3’s, because it requires more focused thinking and thus requires more of the executive function to do it. (And it did wonders the other day as I waited for 25 minutes while the Office Depot worker continually kept botching up a credit transaction while I was trying to check out. I drove home counting in 3’s and soon I was merry!) By trying to call in that function, you are essentially attempting to bypass your mammalian brain and bring yourself back into using your executive function. You can also write down the numbers, spelling out each one. Note that these are just techniques to use in the moment. You’ll likely need to give space to process the emotion from the trigger after the fact.

If you find yourself triggered and about to write an e-mail, STOP. You will be writing a mammalian-brained e-mail. Take some time to stop, breathe and process before writing that email. Or, write it and keep it in your drafts folder. Go back to it in a day or so when you’ve regained your executive function and then send.

3. Stay curious

Another way to deal with triggers is to get really curious about the other person that triggered you. If the person is making you flip your lid, you want to get to the point where you can start to take steps to separate their action from their intention. Their action may be making you flip out, but perhaps that was not their intention. If you lash out at them and say they are being this way or doing this because of x, you may find yourself in a vortex of projection.   And trust me, you’ll be revealing more about yourself in your words than about anyone else.

Here’s some suggested language to use: “I’m curious: what did you mean when you said <fill in the blank>?” or “I’m curious: when you did this, what was your intention?” In my coaching work with clients, what I find is that most of the time, people are not out to trigger others on purpose. However, the person doing the triggering often can benefit from learning to be more self-aware of their actions and how they may impact the triggered person. The person triggered can work on starting to separate the action from the intention.

4. Get to the bottom of it!

This is a big one. What you have to understand is that triggers are often associated with experiences from our childhood that caused us to feel threatened or fearful. The mammalian brain kicks in and does everything it can to keep us safe, because that feeling or emotion is just too painful for us to handle. Most of the time, those triggered feelings relate back to feelings of being unloved, worthlessness, and abandonment (I know – grim). BUT!!! And I say this again: everyone has triggers – nobody is without them. Understanding the origins of your triggers can really help shed new light on your relationships, and empower you to take control and responsibility for your own reactions and behaviors when you feel triggered. It’s hard to trace triggers back to their origins, but there are some effective coaching techniques that can help you uncover them. Often, when I help a client trace back the origins of a trigger, they cite that the next time they are triggered, the trigger does not have nearly as much of an impact on them as when they were not aware of their trigger.

These are some tips to try. And if you try and don’t always get it right – that’s OK. We are all human, and making changes in our behavior takes some getting used to. And sometimes after mastering one trigger, we’re faced with a new one and have to start all over. Heck, I still discover new triggers in myself from time to time! The point is to try, and to get better at understanding and managing yourself. You can re-pattern the reaction you have to the stimulus.

When do you get triggered? How are you able to effectively manage your triggers? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below!

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4 Tips for Managing Performance on the Fly

1/13/2015

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The other month I delivered a talk to a group of 50 some people at a large technology company. The executive that preceded me had gone over her allotted time in the presentation. Unfortunately, the moderator did not make up for lost time in the Q&A session. As a result, I found myself having to cram an hour-and-20-minute presentation I had so carefully planned into 50 minutes. Yikes!

Moreover, after the executive presented, half of the audience got up to get food, and some people left. I went from feeling excited and prepared to feeling rushed, uneasy and nervous, wondering how I was going to fit everything in. I actually started to feel like nobody wanted to listen to me. For a moment, I could feel myself losing my composure. I knew my saboteur, that inner voice of criticism and negativity, was about to get the best of me. Fortunately, I was able to self-manage and get through the presentation just fine. Here are some things that helped me get through this unexpected situation with grace and ease.

1.    Put Things into Perspective

Rather than get annoyed at the way things were flowing, I had to pause and put things into perspective. I reminded myself that there have been far greater offenses in similar situations, and to much more distinguished people in a much more complicated performance environment! I had a flashback to world-class Indian artist, Pandit Chitresh Das* who I had the benefit of studying under for over a decade. He once lost his entire microphone system during a major dance performance in India. I watched as he was in the middle of a solo and his mic just shut off. Despite him being in the middle of a composition and getting thrown totally off, he kept going (though he looked quite annoyed - who wouldn't be?), finishing his compositions until the sound could be restored. Taking that lesson to heart, that’s what I did. I told myself this wasn’t the end of the world. It didn’t have to be perfect and, I should be nimble enough to go with the flow and improvise. I also thought about surfing and the way the ocean has taught me this lesson thousands of times in it's ever changing, unpredictable way, often reminding me what a speck I am in the grand scheme of the world. I started calculating in my head what I was going to cut. I also got clear with what was most important in the moment: how I showed up, as my attitude and mental state would either make the talk or break it. Putting things into perspective helped greatly in managing this snafu.

2.    Prepare, Prepare, Prepare!

I continued my talk just fine. I almost got through all of my slides when I clicked on the next one, only to realize none of my animated bullets made it into the master deck compiled by the company, which guided all my talking points! Surprised and embarrassed, I quickly grabbed my paper notes from the side and revealed verbally each point, one by one.

Even with 15 years of public speaking experience under my belt, I can’t stress the importance of being as prepared as possible for whatever presentation or project you may be doing. You just never know what will happen, and you want to feel comfortable enough with the content that you can improvise on it if you have to.

For a 20-minute talk, I often put in hours of prep time, as I’m not a natural, on-the-fly orator. I know my slides and points like the back of my hand. I made sure I had backup notes, just in case the slides clonked out. Instead of expending energy scrambling as a result of not seeing my bullet points on the slide, I put my energy towards grabbing my notes and presenting from there. Though it wasn’t completely polished, it was fine. And, I was able to get my points across with no problem, while still feeling confident in my delivery. This would have been hard to do if I were less prepared.

3.    Get as Much Experience Under Your Belt as Possible

The more experience you have, the better you’ll be able to manage through unexpected bumps in the road. For speaking, experience can range from presenting something to your roommate or friend or spouse, to presenting at a full-blown conference. It doesn’t always have to be in the context in which you are doing your work. For example, I taught dance for years. Being in front of students and presenting to them absolutely contributed to the development of my public speaking skills. So, get as much experience as possible. The more experience you get, and the more the experience can mirror the conditions under which you have to perform, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and the better you will be able to manage on the fly.

When I was in high school, I was presenting an original oration at a forensics conference in Boston. It was my first time speaking and competing in that particular division. I felt so unsure and doubted my speech so much that I lost my confidence in the middle, and wasn’t able to finish it. I just sat down, feeling a bit ashamed, embarrassed and defeated. I was usually very comfortable speaking, but this was a new topic area for me, and I was out of my comfort zone. After everyone had completed their orations, the judge came back to me. He was kind, and gave me the opportunity to go back up on the stage and present, but I still did not do it.

When I talk about gaining experience, I mean facing situations that you may not be able to get through at that time, but that will stretch you, and yes, even scare you a bit.   Contrast this story to many years later in my professional career when I’d find myself presenting in front of an audience of hundreds of women halfway across the world at a major women’s business conference (and getting paid thousands of dollars to do it). Things went fine, but I would have never gotten there without both the positive and not so positive experiences under my belt. Gaining that confidence takes time, and there can be some humbling experiences along the way. But just keep doing and learn to appreciate the experiences, even if you don't come out on top for all of them.   Most athletes and artists get this at a visceral level (why they have a thing called rehearsals and practice), but what about taking that mindset to our professional work?

4.    Know Your Purpose

During the unexpected bumps in my recent talk, it occurred to me that I could stay rigid to the way things were SUPPOSED to go and, as a result, fall apart or complain when they didn’t go as planned (this is a very left-brained way of seeing the world). Or, I could swing over to the other side and allow for a little possibility, a characteristic associated with right-brained processing.

On my way down to the talk, I was in a funky mood. I decided to close my eyes and did a meditation on the plane. I focused on my breathing and imagined a heart with a chocolate ice cream cone in it (hey, I was taught as a kid to meditate on ice cream cones throughout my martial arts training. It stuck so it’s fair game in my book. The point is to keep your mind focused on one thing). This was followed by a vision of what I call ninja love – spreading love through the sending of hearts all around me, in the shape of heart discuses. I know it sounds strange, but this is just what came to me. It was through this meditation that I connected with my purpose for the day. The content was important, but more than anything, I realized I was there to inspire, and - I know this will sound woo woo - to spread love. I realized that delivering a perfect presentation was far from the point. The point was all about how I showed up in relation to the people I would meet and what intention I had for them in the moments I was able to connect with them. The more relaxed, centered, connected and focused I showed up, the greater impact I’d be able to make with my words.

No matter what the chaos, I truly believe that the attitude and energy we cultivate in our space makes all the difference. This is not to say that it should have been all on me to make my talk successful. In the end, I was able to debrief with their team and share with them ideas for how to better manage these events, as well as make a checklist of what I needed to prepare going forward, should I encounter a similar scenario. Even better, the team members who organized the talk evaluated themselves, and they picked up on most of the hiccups so that next time, things could run smoother. Remember: there are no mistakes in life - just experiments with results as touted author, Gregg Levoy, says!

In the end, the participants were elated. They were engaged, and we got very positive feedback on the event. And that’s what mattered most.

Performance is a complicated tapestry of inner mental work, readiness and practice. (Note: That’s a tweetable. Tweet away!) Improvisation always needs a solid base. When things don’t go as expected, we need that base and mental readiness to move forward, whether we are an athlete, motivational speaker, or performer.

What strategies and techniques do you use to manage your performance when unexpected glitches happen? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section below!

*Pandit Chitresh Das completed his spiritual journey on earth, and recently passed at the age of 70. He not only left behind a legacy of timeless teachings in his craft, but, in my opinion, a way of thinking - patterning the minds of those he touched deeply, equipping us with skills to manage through the ups and downs of the unexpected. There is no way to memorialize his legacy in this short blog (nor is that the point of this post), but he was the first person who came to mind when sitting down to write on this topic, so I just went with it. He will be forever missed.

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Founder Transitions: 6 Things You Need to Know From a Founder

12/10/2014

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I recently coached a non-profit executive about two years away from an impending transition out of her non-profit organization. After understanding structurally where the organization was at and how she envisioned her exit, there was a part of me that wanted to yell, “Are you f*&%ing crazy? You can’t do that!” However, being the refined coach that I am, ;) I was able to maneuver with grace and ease through the conversation and drop some knowledge on the matter. I was surprised, actually, at how much knowledge I had acquired around transitions. I decided to take off my coaching hat (which allows me to view the client as the expert of his or her own life) and drop some hardcore advice. Really, I just wanted to see my client avoid the pitfalls and be as successful as she could be during the transition out of her organization.

Thinking more about our conversation inspired me to write this post. Below are 6 things I think you REALLY need to know about Founder transitions. I always tell my clients that transitions can either be well thought out and smooth with sufficient planning. The opposite outcome is that the shit can hit the fan and force the transition. And then there’s the happy medium of in between. No matter what path you face on your transition, I hope these points can serve to help make it smoother and more productive for all involved.

1. Get Clear on Where YOU Stand First

Remember that 80’s song by The Clash called ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’?

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know…

This indecision's buggin' me (Indecisión me molesta)
If you don't want me, set me free (Si no me quieres, librame)
Exactly whom I'm supposed to be (Dime! ¿Qué tengo ser?)
Don't you know which clothes even fit me? (¿Sabes que ropa me quedar?)
Come on and let me know (Pero tienes que decir)
Should I cool it or should I blow? (¿Me debo ir o quedarme?)

If you find that those lyrics really resonate with you, you know what it feels like to be a Founder in transition. Continue reading below, por favor.

When longtime Founders leave, there is no doubt that their absence affects the energy of the entire organization. A big question to consider is what will happen to your business or organization when you leave. Your options are to sell, merge, be acquired by a larger business or organization, hire a new leader or to close. These are the options for all businesses. Yet one of the most important things to do is to get clear first on what YOU want for yourself.

Once you are clear, you will be that much more effective in creating a plan and path forward. If you aren’t clear, it will likely throw everyone else around you off, and for some personality types, the ambiguity can be extremely uncomfortable. So, do your research and know what direction you want to take first – WHEN do you want to transition? WHAT do you want your relationship to the organization or business to be, if anything? HOW will this happen? You’ll be surprised by how much having clarity for yourself will help move the process forward for everyone involved.

2. Create a New Generation

Remember that old Pepsi brand motto: “Pepsi, the Choice of a New Generation”? Well, replace “Pepsi” with your business or organization name and that’s what we’re going for here!

The biggest thing you can set up for your business or organization preceding your exit is a generation of leadership and followers of your organization’s brand for which YOU don’t matter. What you’re going for is Casper the friendly ghost; you want to get to the point where you are just a shadow of a presence in all things related to the running of the ship. It’s as if you can step away and you’re irrelevant to the cause because nobody really knew you in the first place. In other words, relationships and getting business (or grants or whatever) are not solely dependent on you, Casper.

After 10 years running my organization, I took a sabbatical for a few months. When I got home, I looked around and there were new volunteers, some new donors that knew very little about me and there were new clients that had relationships with the rest of the staff irrespective of me. Sometimes, Founders take sabbaticals precisely to force organizations to build capacity to operate more independently without them. For me, going away was the best thing I did for the organization; it forced it to start operating dependent only on mission - a more social justice aligned way of operating - and less on individual, charismatic leadership, - a more capitalist, business-centric philosophy of leadership. However, it may be different for you, depending on whether you are in for-profit, are an entrepreneur, have investors, etc

A colleague of mine founded and left her non-profit organization to a successor. About 2 years after her exit, her husband went to one of the organization’s events and introduced himself as the Founder’s husband. Everyone mistook him for one of the current leader’s husband, because nobody knew who the Founder was. It was the best feeling for him and my colleague to be totally anonymous, after years of putting everything into the organization. See? The Casper principal applies to spouses, too!

In short, what you want to do is find ways to start stepping back while still keeping your vigilance, and allow people to enter the enterprise or organization without having to touch you, or know about you. Start to spread your relationships out among staff, and if appropriate, the board. Think about leaving a lasting philosophy rather than a permanent presence. Create a new generation of supporters, customers and followers loyal to the BRAND and not to you.

3. Don’t Always be the PR Face

As part of building a new generation, you will need to build others as the spokespeople for your business or organization. For larger organizations with division heads, this may be easy to do. However, if you have just one ship, chances are, things are funneling to you.

As a Founder, you are always going to be a human interest story. Don’t ask me why – the media loves Founder stories, especially if it’s the “was an underdog and found success” flavored narrative. Enough! Now, try to make your clients’ success the front of your PR. This will help with the impending transition.

Identify other key staff people or board members whom you can point PR towards when being interviewed for the news or other publications. If I could give you one piece of radical Founder advice it is this: if you are serious about leaving, don’t do ANY PR during your last year with the enterprise. See how it feels, and see what other leadership and capacity emerges within the organization if you don’t do it.

Note: the above advice doesn’t hold if you plan on transitioning into more of a branding role for the organization where you are positioned as a high level, critical thinker still affiliated with the organization. This is also a model I have seen some Founders follow, as the business world thinks that sometimes the enterprise does better to have the Founder still affiliated with it. If this is the case, you can be used very strategically to continue to forward the mission or business of the organization and remain the steward of some key relationships.

4. Make a Case for the Individual vs. Collective Good

This point especially applies to non-profit or social justice organizations. One of the challenges these organizations face when they have a very corporate board is the lens with which the board views leadership. Expect folks more attuned to a corporate model to view the CEO as the most important figurehead. This is largely the model in start-up businesses where the board and investors sees themselves as essentially investing in the entrepreneur or Founder and, in some cases, the founding team. While this is one model of leadership largely originating from market-based business models, it can be at odds with a non-profit that seeks a more collective culture and membership. You can guide people through this friction, but it will take thoughtful narratives to carry people forward.

You see, the problem arises when leadership fails to walk the board or team through understanding the nuances of different models of leadership, offering them a narrative of why leadership should start to become more collective vs. individualized for social impact organizations. This may be hard for some folks to wrap their head around, as studies show that the brain is more prejudiced against things it cannot process or understand. If the concept is a bit alien to your board members or team members, don’t expect them to have well-defined neural patterns to understand it. They will always be prejudiced to their way. So expect pushback.

I’ve seen non-profit executives especially pull their hair out struggling with a corporate board. Sometimes, it is an issue of the executive not knowing how to craft a narrative that can bring the members along and reconcile conflicting value systems, or offer a logical framework as to why the organization is better off with such a value system. Often, transitioning the board is about transitioning them to seeing your value system when it might be at odds with what they are used to. If you want to be a skilled executive leader, you will need a narrative for this to guide the team forward without alienating the board.

5. Be Prepared for Founder’s Syndrome

It sounds like a disease, I know. The good news is that it’s not, really. If you have Founder’s Syndrome, you simply cannot see the organization or business functioning without you. It may keep you from leaving or making healthy changes in services to your mission. Another characteristic of Founder’s Syndrome is that you might want everything your way. In other words, you cannot healthily detach.

Don’t worry – not every founder suffers from this syndrome. But be warned: In some cases, be prepared for OTHERS to have Founder’s Syndrome – to think that things cannot possibly go on without you at the helm, even when you are confident they can, or to not want to listen to anyone else unless they are the Founder. In such cases, you can do things to bring these people along, but also expect that they may drop off in the process or after you leave. Inevitably, they are tied to your brand because of their emotional connection to YOU vs. the emotional connection to the brand, and it creates a slippery slope again for building a sustainable business or organization.

When I announced my executive transition from the organization I ran for 11 years, there certainly was a degree of mental “drop off” from some members of the Board. The thinking is, “if this leader is out, so am I”. It’s not out of malicious intent, but rather a tricky phenomenon of organizational psychology – the imminent losing of faith that happens in an organization when a Founder decides to depart and there is no clear successor.

It was at that point I learned the hard truth about Founder transitions: sometimes people are there to support YOU and not necessarily the organization. There is a saying in Organizational Psychology: People leave people. They don’t leave organizations. It can feel like a stab in the heart when you’ve invested so much in an idea or a business, and you just want to see the work outlive you.

It is important to recognize what kind of board you have. Who would still be committed without you there? Who would leave? Who would be neutral? These are all important things to consider with a transition.

Understand that people will go through several phases of denial, then acceptance, (and maybe never accepting) and may very well decide to move on. Change is never linear and can involve a process of accepting and rejecting, accepting and rejecting. Others can have Founder’s Syndrome no matter what state the organization may be in.

A colleague of mine who founded a national non-profit had a successor already identified and sufficient capital in the bank to run the organization. She still had board members say, “we might as well close” upon hearing her plans to exit, as they believed that the work could not go on. Unfortunately, what is often missing in transitions is envisioning how an org can be BETTER after the Founder. Everyone defaults to envisioning the worst, the crumbling and instability. Almost 5 years later, this particular organization is stronger and thriving with its new leader, perhaps the real hero in terms of making impact. Founder’s Syndrome is more a function of emotional connection and ties others have to you, the leader.

6. DON’T Follow the Textbooks

Just like people, each organization and business has it’s own personality, rhythm and lifecycle. Each one is unique. There is a history and ecosystem as to how and why they do their work and how they historically achieved results. Applying textbook ways of thinking about HOW a transition should ideally happen can be detrimental to your transition, especially when you might be facing time and resource constraints.

And here’s where a bit of brain science comes in. Process thinkers (this thinking occurs in the left hemisphere of the brain) may often be fixated on a way of doing something to the point where they are so rigid, their behavior actually produces divisions in their following. On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t necessarily want to fly by the seat of your pants and just feel your way forward, either. Ideally, you want to be able to have some structure, but take into consideration the uniqueness of the organization or business, and honor the opinions and ideas team members have about how this transition could effectively happen.

If your vision for how a transition happens doesn’t fit the textbook version, it’s OK. Perhaps there aren’t enough resources to invest in an outside consultant, or perhaps the resources should be better spent on coaching for you and your team to figure out the best transition plan for the organization. Founding boards often aren’t independent enough to steward a transition without you, so it’s important to gauge where the organization is at, and to make the transition appropriate to where people are in the process. Textbook thinking can overshadow the brilliance, knowledge, know-how and intuitive pulse you may have on what it is going to take to lead the organization or business to its next level, and the type of vigilance it needs in a new leader.

Your intuition is a result of using the most integrated right and left hemispheres of your brain. Feel your intuition early, and feel it fast. Be open to the intuition of others as well. You may have experienced board members who have watched transitions occur in their own careers and have a gut sense of what needs to happen. Just because you don’t have a drawn out process for it, doesn’t mean you lack the knowledge of what the best move forward is for your enterprise or organization.

To sum it up, get clear on what YOU want to do first, and then start acting from the perspective of sustainability by instilling a collective philosophy vs. thinking of yourself as the leader. Build the capacity of others, understand that change can mean two steps forward and one step back, and always trust your intuition - it can mean the difference between a healthy and smooth and timely transition vs. one wrought with challenges and difficulty.

Thank you to Jane Leu, Award-Winning Serial Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Upwardly Global and Smarter Good, for her input for this post.

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The One Leadership Trait You Should Never Lose

9/8/2014

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I’m all about toolkits when it comes to leadership. You never know what you will face day in and day out, and it helps to have skills and exercises (and tools!) for navigating dynamic working environments.

Same thing is true for transitions. One of the earliest skills I was taught as an executive leader was the importance of having curiosity in your toolkit. In fact, cultivating curiosity is one of the behaviors that has helped me immensely in my career. So what’s the big deal about curiosity? What about the argument of following your intuition? Here are my thoughts on the matter.

I remember going to an executive leadership training many years ago. One of the trainers stood in front of the room and told us all a story. I don’t remember the story very well, but the content is irrelevant to the point. The trainer only gave us part of the story and then asked us what happened next based on what we heard. We were given a few minutes to conjecture the next part of the story. We went around the room, each person telling a wildly different scenario of what they thought happened, from the main protagonist dying, to winning the Olympics. We were essentially left with our own thoughts as guides to make up the remainder of the story. What became apparent was this:

People like to make things up. Period.

Our tendency to make up stories about people, situations, scenarios and projecting our own versions of what happened was something that came easily to us.

We were then read what really happened in the story. Of course it did not match any of our versions. As people and leaders, we make up our own version of reality with limited data all the time. I’m guilty of it too, in business and in life.

Just the other day, I was supposed to take two people up north for a surf outing. The contact person was really responsive initially, and we had set a date. Two days prior, I sent him a confirmation and link to pay, and did not hear a word. Two days passed and it was now the night before our lesson, and still no word. I had already rented gear for the outing and did not know whether to show up or assume they just flaked. I thought perhaps they changed their minds, or maybe I wrote something that offended them in my e-mail. I had so many scenarios going through my head!

When I woke up in the morning, I got a message from them saying their car had broken down and that had set them back on schedule tremendously. They apologized for the lack of response and said they would be there for the appointment. I racked my brain about what happened and started to assume my own version. Yet, in the end, it was just about car trouble.

Staying curious would have allowed me to not stress so much, nor beat myself up. I can’t count the number of times something has happened in a relationship or with a person at work when I’d make up a reason for it in my head, only to find out - once I became curious and asked into a situation or a behavior - the reasons were so different from what I thought!

By staying curious, you free yourself up from interpretations and stories and open yourself up to learning another’s perspective, or gaining insight into a situation.

So what about the age-old advice of trusting your intuition? How do you reconcile staying curious while not getting sidetracked by your intuition? Here’s what I learned from one of my supervisors, Ann Betz, when I was being trained as a coach. Ann is world-renowned in the coaching field, and is responsible for translating the latest in neuroscience findings and applying the research and conclusions to coaching concepts and practices for The Coaches Training Institute. (I know - basically, the coolest job in the world!)

What I learned from Ann is that there is an aspect of intuition having to do with how experiences are stored and patterned in our brain. Simultaneously, neuroscientists believe we have 3 recognized brains – the head brain, the heart brain and the gut brain. In fact, we have neurons in our gut and in our heart that take in information and send it to our central nervous system. That information is then sent up to the right hemisphere of our brain. But what ends up happening when we get these impulses is that the right side of our brain doesn’t necessarily know how to put the feelings into words. These intuitive “hits” as we call them, come to us as energy. Because they’re landing in a part of the brain that can’t necessarily translate the energy into words, it leaves us to use a different part of our brain to interpret it. And so comes our inclination for drawing conclusions based on previous experiences or patterns.

What’s important to note here is that though the “hit” we get and impulse is real and true, it is also true that we may mistake our interpretation of it. This is why, as coaches, we are taught to plug into our intuition with clients, not to get attached to the interpretation of it, but rather to throw out what comes to us and explore it with the client and offer the client a chance to interpret it. Curiosity is crucial for us in this instance, as it releases us from judgment and assumptions. It helps our intuition become a tool of exploration to get to the truth about a situation.

In short, you can use your curiosity when you are using your intuition; just don’t get attached to your interpretation of the intuition.

So whether you get a gut feeling or are left with pieces of a puzzle you cannot make sense of, remain curious and open. If you are a leader, it can open up opportunities to get to clarity and can free you of unnecessary worry. If you are in transition, curiosity can open paths to new opportunities and experiences that you may not have expected. Here are some tips about how to manage your curiosity while also honoring your intuition:

1.    When you feel triggered by something, give yourself time to decompress. Relax, and perhaps journal about your feelings. Talk to friends. Do not assume anything. When you are ready, approach the situation with genuine curiosity.

2.    Segue into curiosity without judgment. A good way to start is, “I noticed x,y,z … I’m curious what happened.” Or, “I’m curious what you were thinking about when you said x,y,z.” How you see and experience a situation may be very different from how another person sees it.

3.    If you’re in transition, make a list of all the things you’ve ever been curious about doing, and see if you can attach a value to each action. Perhaps you want to try horseback riding because it honors your value of feeling free. Perhaps you want to start a business because it honors your value of taking on a challenge. Once you’ve come up with a list and reasons why these things are meaningful to you, ask yourself what the first step would be in making those activities happen. Then, go do it!

4.    Trust your instincts. When you get a hit on something, test out your intuition by saying. “I am feeling x,y,z,” or “I see x,y,z as I’m talking to you.” Follow it up with a question of “Does that land with you?” or “What do you see?”

5.    Use your inner intuition and stay curious when opening yourself up to new paths. If you need to make a decision on something, try closing your eyes and imagine each decision as its own path. Go down one path that represents one decision. If you stayed curious, ask yourself what you see on that path as you move down it. How does it feel? Then try closing your eyes and going down another road that represents another decision, opening yourself up again to curiosity and what naturally may show up in your mind on that path. Journal about your experiences and be open to what you may discover!

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The One Leadership Trait You Should Never Lose

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