Ed Batista: Executive Coaching & Change Management

Crying at Work

2009-09-28T12:07:00-07:00

Is it OK to cry at work?

Bret Simmons had a great post yesterday on crying in the office which prompted some further reflection. I've had many clients, students and colleagues cry with me in my work as an executive coach, and I've cried myself, many times. I think it's important to create a working environment and working relationships in which it's acceptable for people to acknowledge stress, frustration, grief and the wide range of other emotions that can lead to tears. In my experience tears are almost always cathartic, and when they're expressed people feel better afterward as long as they're not stigmatized for doing so.

Bret's post critiques a video from Howdini on "How to deal with crying in the office" that Bret and I both take issue with. An author interviewed in the video states that "work is about facts, not feelings." That's a dangerously naive view of how we operate, even (especially) in the workplace, and the suggestion that we can (and should) simply repress any negative emotions we feel at work strikes me as outdated and unhelpful.

That said, the video features two women and seems to be aimed at women, with a reference to running mascara, and I think it's important to acknowledge that women can pay a greater price than men for crying at work, particularly in certain organizations and industries where crying is stigmatized, and especially in fields where women are underrepresented.

In my role as a coach, I typically encourage people to acknowledge and express their emotions more freely in ways that will support their goals. I firmly believe that the ability to do so allows us to be more effective, more influential and healthier to boot. And I'd like to support the development of a business world in which people can cry as freely as they do in my coaching practice or in my classes with graduate students.

But I also know that my clients and students need to succeed in the world as it exists today, and that includes organizations and industries where people who express emotion, particularly tears, pay a price. So with any individual client or student, I believe that it's essential to understand the context in which they work and whether they will pay a price for expressing their emotions. That doesn't mean they shouldn't cry, of course, but it does allow us to fully assess the implications of doing so, to weigh the costs and benefits, and to strike the right balance between (at one extreme) passive acceptance of an environment in which emotional expressions are taboo and (at the other extreme) a quixotic effort to resist a culture that's not going to change.

I'm reminded that in December 2006, the tears of former President George H. W. Bush made news. Bush was addressing legislators and state workers at the final leadership forum convened by his son Jeb, who was soon to leave office after two terms as governor of Florida. It was the sort of routine political function that would ordinarily be ignored by everyone except those in attendance, but Bush's tears turned it into a national story.

Bush was describing how Jeb handled his defeat in the 1994 governor's race when he broke down. As he struggled with his emotions, he stopped speaking for a moment, and the audience burst into applause. Jeb rushed to his father's side, as shown above, comforted him with an arm around his shoulder, and handed him a bottle of water before Bush continued.

Interviewed after the forum, Bush said, "I'm the emotional one... I don't enjoy breaking up, but when you talk about somebody you love, when you get older, you do it more." So as a powerful figure, as someone discussing his son, and as an older person, Bush had the freedom to cry without fearing the repercussions--and hopefully his doing so made it more acceptable for those of us who lack his advantages.

On Growth and Renewal: An Update

2009-09-01T15:22:04-07:00

How do we invest in our own growth and development? What do we do to renew and revitalize ourselves?

These questions have been on my mind today. Last April Eric Lapp sent me the photo on the left of a tree in his neighborhood that refused to die, an image that struck both of us as a powerful symbol of growth and renewal. Eric just sent me the updated photo at right, and I'm thrilled to see it thriving--it obviously had a good growth spurt this Summer. So what have I done over the past few months to support my own growth and renewal?

Being A Better Coach Means Getting Better Coaching

In a sense, coaches are always being coached. Coaching is an approach to interacting with others--at its simplest, I'd say it's an awareness that I don't have "The Answer" coupled with an ability to ask thought-provoking questions--that we bring to relationships with colleagues as well as to engagements with clients. So my discussions with the other coaches here at Stanford and with my colleagues in the larger executive coaching community often have a certain "coaching feel" to them that can be very helpful. But despite this dynamic there's something uniquely powerful about being in a formal relationship with a coach--which is why my colleagues and I exist in the first place.

So this Summer I began working again with Mary Ann Huckabay, a coach and therapist who recently retired from the Stanford faculty. Mary Ann not only was my prof in the GSB's "Interpersonal Dynamics" course 10 years ago (!), but she also served as my coach in my first Executive Director position after my graduation from business school. I initially approached Mary Ann because I wanted to be better prepared to support students coping with mental illness, particularly depression, but our conversations have extended into a range of other topics related to my effectiveness as a coach, not only with students but also with my private clients. It's been incredibly stimulating and challenging and a lot of fun, and it's certainly the best investment I've made in my own development this year.

Reading, Writing, Reflecting...and Unplugging

I spent a good amount of time in the first half of the Summer reviewing the work I've done here over the past 5 years and reflecting on the themes that emerged. This process resulted in the creation of six Self-Coaching Guides, edited compilations of posts on the topics of Change, Communication, Happiness, Leadership, Learning and Motivation. I didn't select these topics in advance--they seemed to grow naturally out of my writing--and further reflection led me to see them as elements in a larger framework that I'm calling an Operator's Manual for understanding and addressing our professional challenges.

It felt great to have gained this perspective on my work. I understood myself and my approach to coaching more deeply, I felt better prepared to assist my clients and next year's students, and I had a conceptual framework to support continued thinking along these lines. And then I really needed to take a break, which at first was easier said than done. I worried about whether I should be more "productive" over the Summer, and I wondered whether I'd be able to get my momentum back in the Fall. But eventually I realized that I needed to listen to the deeper voice advising me to slow down for a bit, and to let go of the anxieties that were keeping me from doing it.

So in the second half of the Summer, I did a little professional reading--but I read a lot more John O'Hara (my current fave.) Aside from my work with my coach, I had some very rewarding conversations with colleagues--but I spent a lot more time just hanging out with Amy, enjoying her company. I'm looking forward to reading more deeply and writing more frequently again, but simply unplugging for a while has been very invigorating and a great investment in my long-term growth.

The Continued Pursuit of Happiness

Although I dialed back my work here a bit, I've stayed very active in a number of ways, in keeping with the happiness strategies I adopted last Winter: "Taking Care of Your Body," "Increasing Flow Experiences," "Practicing Acts of Kindness" and "Expressing Gratitude." I've certainly been physically active, exercising 70 days in June, July and August. (I've also eaten quite well this Summer, so all that activity hasn't translated into a slimmer profile.) And I've maintained a keen sense of gratitude over the past few months--grateful for the most important people in my life, grateful for the wisdom of David Foster Wallace, grateful even for just a little perspective on a bad day.

I haven't been as successful at cultivating (non-athletic) flow experiences, or at performing (non-trivial) acts of kindness, so I have plenty of room for improvement. But given that I was somewhat down and frustrated a few weeks ago, I feel that my commitment to these practices has helped me develop a more resilient, deeper happiness that allows me to bounce back more readily--and that feels like an important area of growth.

None of this is to say that I feel a sense of complacency about myself or my development--I'm acutely aware of my shortcomings as a person, a husband, a coach, a friend. But that awareness of my shortcomings is, in part, what's inspired my focus on growth and renewal. And it's because I know that I can do better, in so many ways, that it's so gratifying to look back over the past few months and think, "Hey, not bad!"

Which brings me back to the questions I asked above, and I pose them to you:

How are you investing in your own growth and development? What are you doing to renew and revitalize yourself?

A Long Weekend in Point Reyes

2009-08-31T19:19:04-07:00

I've made a concerted effort this past month to unplug, disconnect and de-blog. (Hey, I've barely even tweeted.) I haven't been idle, but I've given myself plenty of leeway to just do whatever I felt like doing--which has included a lot of exercise but not much writing.

As part of that strategy, Amy and I just spent a long weekend in Point Reyes. It wasn't exactly restful--I returned to SF slightly worse for wear, having pushed it a little too hard on the trails and at the dinner table. (Yes, you can eat too much Marin Sun Farms steak.) But it was still deeply satisfying to be there, exploring new corners while returning to some old haunts.

One change from past trips was staying in a cottage right on Tomales Bay. The distant hill lit by the setting sun above is Barnabe Peak, which I climbed 3 years ago.

This was the first time we've been all the way out to Limantour Beach--the point at the far left in the background is Chimney Rock. Layers of "monsoonal moisture" resulted in some unusually dramatic clouds rather than the typical Summer fog (for a night, at least.)

We didn't make it to the end of the 3.5 mile Limantour Spit, but we got far enough to look across the estero at Drake's Head (on the right). That's the hill we climbed in June, the end of an amazing, desolate ranchland hike.

Tule Elk on Tomales Point, with Mt. Saint Helena in the background. These two males are from the "bachelors herd," a somewhat sad group of adolescent and declining males who've been ousted from the main herd by the dominant male (whose reign can last just a single mating season, apparently.)

The tip of Tomales Point, draped with sea lions and cormorants.

The walkway behind our cottage, leading out into Tomales Bay. At the end you can just make out a loveseat where we enjoyed a warm and starry evening under the monsoonal moisture before the fog rolled in.

A final, solitary view from Limantour Beach. I've said it before: Thank you, Phil Burton.

I suspect the urge to write'll return once Summer's over and classes at Stanford have begun. See you here again soon.

Bad Leader! Stifling Dissent

2009-08-10T12:45:30-07:00

In short order Bret Simmons of the University of Nevada, Reno, has become one of my favorite thinkers on management; he's in Bob Sutton's class as an academic who clearly gets the web, and his blog is a lively and informative read.

Today Bret has a great post on how bad leaders stifle dissent:

1) Your people never see you say no. You never disagree or challenge the people you work for, so your people never learn from you how to do this with purpose. You send the very clear message that “no” is not acceptable around here.

2) People that have told you no are gone. You have systematically removed from your inner circle everyone that disagreed or challenged your policies and decisions. But that’s ok, because everyone knows they were not team players, or were disloyal or disrespectful. This is the rhetoric of conformity and exclusion.

I'd add a third behavior to this list: Failing to accept differences of opinion and pushing beyond a reasonable point to obtain uniform public agreement. Your people don't feel free to voice disagreement because you hound them until they change their mind (or at least that's what they appear to be doing.)

There will always be times when leaders need to override their team members--and making that decision wisely is a key element of effective leadership. When a leader makes that choice, it's usually advisable to devote some time to discussion to see if common ground can be found and/or to persuade the team.

But if common ground can't be found, and persuasion's not effective, and the leader still believes that overriding the team is the right way to go, they need to accept their team's right to disagree and trust that the team can still deliver on their mandate. Pushing further to extract (superficial) agreement demonstrates a lack of trust (in them and in your own authority), leads to intractable arguments and/or hypocrisy, and insures that you'll hear fewer honest opinions in the future.

(And if you don't recognize Humprey Bogart as Captain Queeg, get The Caine Mutiny on your Netflix queue ASAP.)

Happy Birthday To Me

2009-08-07T10:48:40-07:00

I'm 42 today. Yay me! As I wrote in March, 42 is "too young to feel truly old, but old enough to no longer feel young." Forty was just a number--I really didn't feel much different as a result. But 41 was a quite a bit heavier because Amy and I lost several family members that year, and that process has continued this year, leading to thoughts about mortality while laid up or caring for Amy after surgery.

Andy Chan, the former Director of Stanford's Career Management Center, once provided me with a great framework for thinking about where we are in a given journey or experience by asking, "Are you in the first half or the second half?" And it's safe to assume that I'm in the second half of this existence. (Although hopefully it's still the third quarter.)

As a result of my reflections over the past few months, I'm comfortable with this. Being sick and helping Amy recover made me realize how little I know about aging and infirmity, but, paradoxically, learning how unprepared I truly am has helped me prepare. Funny how growing old (up?) works that way.

So a sense of my mortality doesn't leave me feeling gloomy--but it does cause me to take stock, to look around and assess where I am and what I'm doing. And last night I wrote to a friend that "I've been feeling down lately, wondering whether I'm making enough of a difference, feeling a little frustrated and envious as I get glimpses down other paths."

This is largely a result of the absence of our students over the Summer, those from the Class of 2009, who have graduated and left the GSB behind, and those from the Class of 2010, who are in the midst of their internships all over the world. I have more time to see private coaching clients when classes aren't in session, but on balance I spend less time coaching and more time on administrative work and other projects at Stanford over the Summer. Coaching is my vocation, it sustains and feeds me--but the rest is just stuff that needs to get done. It's not drudgery, but it's not my passion, either.

So knowing that expressing gratitude is one of the keys to my happiness, I've been reflecting on what I'm grateful for, what I appreciate--which is to say who I'm grateful for, who I appreciate:

Amy, first and always. I'm so grateful for the chance that brought us together and all the hard work we've put in over the last 23 years to stay together. More than anything else, my love for you and your love for me give my life meaning and purpose.
My Mom and Dad. In some ways I was a really easy kid to raise; in other ways I know I was unbelievably difficult. Thank you for putting up with me through the difficulties. I don't tell you enough how much I love and appreciate you.
My brothers David and Matthew. See above--in some ways I think I've been a pretty good older brother; in other ways I know I could do better. Time with you is one of the rarest treasures in my life, and I wish there was more of it.
My friends. The friend I mentioned above emailed me just to say how much she was appreciating my writing here, which was incredibly powerful and uplifting to hear. I have a lot of people in my life like that, and I am truly lucky to call you my friends.
My clients and students. Second only to my marriage, my work with you fulfills me and gives me a purpose in life. I'm deeply grateful for every opportunity to talk with you, to share your challenges and your joys, to be a part of your journey. Thank you.
All the little moments that remind me what a privilege it is to be here, like the one captured above, atop Drake's Head in Point Reyes with Amy in June. Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky. That's me.

On Being Noticed And NOT Being Crushed

2009-08-06T14:41:00-07:00

I recently heard Walter Mosley interviewed on NPR, and one of his comments jumped out at me:

People are very small in the modern world. We could get crushed, and no one would notice.

Certain aspects of modern life--such as the ability to have a voice in a global network--make me feel a lot "larger" and more noticeable as an individual. (I blog, therefore I am?) But the global nature of this network also threatens to overwhelm me--I can feel lost in its vastness.

And I'm recognized by modern institutions--as a citizen, say, or as a customer--in ways that weren't possible in earlier eras. But, of course, the increasingly massive size of those same institutions can make me feel quite small and insignificant. How much do I really matter to them? (Customer service, anyone?)

So even as the modern world empowers us, it undermines that empowerment. We still have to strive to be heard, to assert our existence, to say that we do matter. And we still have to struggle to protect ourselves, to insure that we are noticed, to avoid being crushed.

Helping people achieve these goals is actually at the heart of what I do as a coach. Finding meaning in our work and being as effective as possible in our chosen field is one of the most powerful ways to discover and express our identities, to be heard, to be noticed. And balancing professional success with personal fulfillment may be the only way to survive the modern world intact, to not be crushed.

Photo by Mark Coggins. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

What Are You Paying Attention To?

2009-08-05T04:00:00-07:00

What's your most valuable resource?

Give this a little thought and you might say it's your time. But it's not time--it's attention.

True, we consume time when we pay attention to something. But we can free up more time by doing fewer things, or by doing some things faster, or just by stopping sooner. In a sense, time is elastic.

But attention is far less malleable. We're either focused on something or we're not. And we focus--I mean truly focus--on just one thing at a time. Don't talk to me about multitasking--it's a myth. Having lots of things in the background, occupying our "peripheral attention," isn't true multitasking any more than using our peripheral vision is true "multi-seeing." It just means that our focus is shifting more frequently--which can substantially decrease our efficiency as we cycle in and out of various tasks.

I spent 2005-06 as the Executive Director of AttentionTrust, a nonprofit that aspired to educate people about the value of their "attention data," i.e. the mountains of data generated by what we pay attention to (and what we ignore), while providing them with the means to actually capture and make use of this data by means of a Firefox plugin. I was reminded of that experience and of the crucial importance of attention by Sam Anderson's recent "In Defense of Distraction" in New York. Anderson interviews psychologist David Meyer, Director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan:

I begin, a little sheepishly, with a question that strikes me as sensationalistic, nonscientific, and probably unanswerable by someone who's been professionally trained in the discipline of cautious objectivity: Are we living through a crisis of attention?

Before I even have a chance to apologize, Meyer responds with the air of an Old Testament prophet. "Yes," he says. "And I think it's going to get a lot worse than people expect." He sees our distraction as a full-blown epidemic--a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. He compares it, in fact, to smoking. "People aren't aware what's happening to their mental processes," he says, "in the same way that people years ago couldn't look into their lungs and see the residual deposits."

Anderson goes on to discuss the "cognitive plague"--all the devices and channels that clamor for our attention today--in greater detail, as well as the increasing prevalence of "neuroenhancers" like Adderall that many people--particularly students--are using to improve their ability to focus and be productive, before circling around to suggest that distractions can actually be good things:

The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction. Unwavering focus--the inability to be distracted--can actually be just as problematic as ADHD. Trouble with "attentional shift" is a feature common to a handful of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and OCD. It's been hypothesized that ADHD might even be an advantage in certain change-rich environments... It's possible that we're all evolving toward a new techno-cognitive nomadism, a rapidly shifting environment in which restlessness will be an advantage again. The deep focusers might even be hampered by having too much attention: Attention Surfeit Hypoactivity Disorder.

I find Anderson's argument here compelling: the ability to let go and move on in a highly dynamic environment can be a valuable adaptive trait, and dogged determination in the same environment can be a sign of fatal inflexibility rather than laser-like focus. But I'd emphasize two points before embracing that idea fully.

First, sometimes we're distracted for vitally important reasons, as Anderson's conversation with productivity guru Merlin Mann makes clear:

For Mann, many of our attention problems are symptoms of larger existential issues: motivation, happiness, neurochemistry. "I'm not a physician or a psychiatrist, but I'll tell you, I think a lot of it is some form of untreated ADHD or depression," he says. "Your mind is not getting the dopamine or the hugs that it needs to keep you focused on what you're doing. And any time your work gets a little bit too hard or a little bit too boring, you allow it to catch on to something that’s more interesting to you."

When I'm distracted because I'm demotivated or unhappy, my distraction is neither a symptom of the "cognitive plague" nor a badge of honor befitting a "techno-cognitive nomad." Rather, it's an early warning sign of a deeper issue that needs to be addressed directly.

And second, what we pay attention to matters. In Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin wrote:

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

What we pay attention to matters, because we pay for what we pay attention to, and we pay for it very simply; by the lives we lead.

Photo by hellosputnik. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Teaching Leadership with Stanford's Leadership Fellows

2009-08-04T12:55:12-07:00

Can leadership be taught? More specifically, can it be taught by peers? (And what does William James have to do with it?)

At Stanford I work closely with the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program, in which a cadre of second-year students leads the first-year class through a series of small-group workshops known as the Leadership Labs. Both the Leadership Fellows program and the Leadership Labs themselves are examples of experiential learning, where conceptual theories provide a frame for hands-on, face-to-face activities.

Last year I did some thinking about experiential learning after reading Robert Richardson's William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism:

In the book's penultimate chapter, Richardson quotes from James's Some Problems of Philosophy:

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substituting a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.

The profound meaning of this quote for me is rooted in the fact that my work hinges upon the unique ability of experiential learning to expand both our self-awareness and our behavioral repertoire, and (by extension) upon the inability of conventional modes of instruction to achieve the same results. Richardson continues:

For this aspect of his later thinking, James has been called anti-intellectual. A better description of his real position would be anti-abstraction; best would be to recognize it as the culmination of a lifelong protest on behalf of experience. This is not a new position for James, of course. It is the same clear opposition to Plato, who denigrates perceptual knowledge as mere sense impressions, and contrasts them with ideas, which are true and eternal. Jame's life work had been to reverse this polarity, to answer Plato...

[But the Platonic] model is much less useful in a field where there are few (if any) universal truths, which is the case in my areas of expertise: executive coaching, leadership development and group facilitation. I can't tell anyone anything and have confidence that real learning will occur. I can disclose my own sense-impressions, but the choice to view them as relevant and meaningful remains in the hands of the learner. Ultimately all I can do as an instructor is act on hunches, ask questions, and make observations, and hope they register with the learner as lasting sense-impressions and that the learner infuses them with meaning. And that meaning must be created out of their own, personal experiences as a leader or in a group.

So back to the question at hand: Can students teach leadership to their peers? Absolutely--but I'd highlight 3 important issues:

1) Leadership Is Learned, Not Taught

Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic and currently a professor of management at Harvard Business School, has said:

I don't think you can teach leadership, I think you can learn about it. I think you can learn about yourself. It comes from within, from who are you inside and what makes you tick, and what are those tapes playing in your head about what you want to be and what your limitations are...

What we can do [in leadership development classes] is cause people to come together and learn about themselves through dialogue... You learn about who you are, and if you go inside yourself, you find out, "What are my passions?"...

Do you seek out honest feedback from people about who you are? The hardest thing we have to do is see ourselves as others see us. And do you gain that self-awareness? Some people think they have it, but they've never really tested themselves, and that is crucial.

This is exactly what we seek to do with the Leadership Fellows, and what we train them to do with their peers: Provide experiences that will allow them to understand themselves better--their strengths, their passions and their limitations--and engage in discussions that will expand their self-awareness through candid feedback.

2) Peers Are Guides and Facilitators, Not Teachers

If leadership is learned rather than taught, then it stands to reason that our Leadership Fellows aren't teaching, even though their students are learning. The Fellows do present some conceptual material to their peers to frame the exercises in the Labs, on topics such as active listening, emotional intelligence, or the stages of group development.

But the real value provided by the Fellows in the leadership development process comes not from their mastery of abstract concepts but from their ability to guide a small group of their peers through a series of experiences, ranging from highly structured exercises to open-ended role-plays based on business scenarios, and to facilitate discussions in which the participants get candid feedback on their effectiveness and reflect on their performance.

Having a highly differentiated authority figure--i.e. a teacher--leading an experiential learning process can actually inhibit learning, because the students will aim for the "right" answer and seek to win the teacher's approval, which can distort their authentic reactions to the experience. But there's rarely (if ever) one right answer when it comes to effective leadership, and if students aren't acting authentically in an experiential process, whatever they learn isn't going to stick. In contrast, a peer guide/facilitator, like one of our Leadership Fellows, has just enough authority and expertise to provide some structure, but not so much that it distorts their peers' response.

3) Leadership Is Everywhere, Not Just at the Top

Leadership isn't derived from titles or status, and being in a leadership position doesn't automatically make you a leader. (You may be able to use positional power to enforce your will, but I wouldn't call that leading.) Conversely, the lack of a formal position doesn't mean you lack opportunities to lead. Organizations need leaders at every level, not merely among the ranks of senior management. (David Bradford has noted that the idea of "middle management" gets all the attention when "middle leadership" is arguably far more important--although not as catchy.)

Our Leadership Fellows exemplify this type of "middle leadership"--they're in a differentiated role, and at the beginning of the Labs they have some authority on the basis of that role, but within a few weeks that differentiation erodes and their students come to see them more as peers than as authority figures. So their ability to lead rests not on their positional power but on their success at motivating and influencing--in other words, actual leadership.

And I'd argue that the experience of having a peer as a leader and seeing "middle leadership" in action may be one of the most important aspects of the Leadership Labs--because our first-year students realize that even in the relative absence of positional power, even when you don't have years of experience, you can still be a leader. Are all our Fellows equally successful at this? No, and that's why experienced coaches like me are here--to be a backstop, a safety net, to help them through the rough spots. Can the program be improved? Yes, and that's something we focus on every year. But I'm confident that every one of the Fellows I've worked with personally over the past 3 years has helped his or her students develop their leadership potential in some new and unexpected ways.

Photo of William James by Psychology Pictures. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Holly Ross is Awesome: The Nonprofit Times Top 50

2009-08-04T12:01:37-07:00

Holly Ross, the Executive Director of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) is one of the smartest, most caring, and most genuine people I know. She's the definition of a community leader. But she's also one of the most self-effacing people I know, quick to deflect attention from her accomplishments and to credit her peers and colleagues, and at times I don't think she's gotten the recognition she truly deserves.

Not anymore. This week Holly was listed among the Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50, along with 49 other key leaders from the nonprofit sector, and it's hard to keep a low profile when you're standing next to people like Bill Gates and Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America.

As the first Executive Director of NTEN, I had the privilege of working alongside Holly for 4 years, first as a leading community member and a consultant and then as the second member of our staff. I'm really proud of what we accomplished as an organization, but one of my most lasting memories of that experience is simply how rewarding it was to work with Holly. And knowing how rarely she takes credit for her talents, it's particularly meaningful to me to see them recognized by the NP Times.

Kudos, Holly! It couldn't have happened to a nicer person--or a better leader.

On Change: Inclination, Motivation, Action

2009-07-29T15:43:00-07:00

UPDATE: With some time to reflect further on the graphic above and the essay below, I have a few clarifying thoughts on its purpose:

1) This model describes the conditions that support sustainable change.

2) The questions that accompany each of the model's components--inclination, motivation, and action--allow us to determine whether the conditions are right for change and to understand how we might influence those conditions.

3) And if we define sustainable change as "influencing ourselves," there's a clear parallel between this model and the Influence Pyramid--food for future thought. (Must be something about yellow triangles.)

How do we make change happen in our lives? What supports our efforts? And what gets in our way?

This post seeks to illustrate a universal topic--the process of change--using as a vehicle a very particular story about the role of exercise in my life. It's a work-in-progress on a theme, so I hope you'll bear with me if it feels rough in spots. I've written before about how I use Don't Break the Chain as a tool to help me exercise on a regular basis. It's an extremely simple website that allows you to create "chains" consisting of days on a calendar that you fill in after completing an activity on a given day. There's something compelling about the site's simplicity--you click on a day to fill it in, and that's all you can do. There's also the visceral impact of an increasingly color-filled calendar when you successfully keep a chain alive (and, conversely, the impact of a long stretch of blank, white days when you've failed to complete your chosen task.) Here's a (regrettably grainy) screenshot of my exercise calendar to date this year:

I was on a roll until March, when my wife and I both came down with a terrible cold, and between our recovery, helping Amy through her subsequent shoulder surgery, and an insanely busy Spring Quarter at Stanford, it took three months to really find my stride again. But I'm kicking ass in July--yay me.

Reflecting on this experience has made me think about how and why I've been able to stay active--or, more accurately, to return to a fulfilling level of activity, over and over again, even when daily life gets in my way. And that process led me to think at a more abstract level about the process of change.

I was an athlete in high school, and I stayed active throughout college, but once I began working full-time I found it difficult to exercise regularly on a sustainable basis. Throughout my 20s and 30s I'd work out daily for a few months, and then I'd stop and not do a damn thing for weeks on end. And then I'd start up again, and the cycle would repeat itself. I was generally pretty fit and could sustain this process physically, but it was psychologically draining. I wanted to change and to break this cycle but was perpetually unsuccessful.

But last year, after turning 40 in mid-2007, my body began telling me in no uncertain terms that being inactive for lengthy periods and then suddenly launching into a fitness regime was no longer an option. If I wanted to be active at all, I was going to have to get active and stay active, permanently. Just as importantly, this year I came to understand that physical activity is an essential element in my happiness; I can't be sustainably happy unless I'm sustainably active.

And so over the last two years I've suddenly found it possible to break this two-decade-long cycle and to make a sustainable commitment to my physical fitness. Have I been 100% successful? No, of course not--just look at some of those long white stretches in the calendar above. But also notice how quickly I got back in the saddle, so to speak. In the past, the cumulative effect of an illness, and caregiving for Amy, and a hectic period at work would have been months of inactivity. But this year the longest I've gone without exercising was 15 days.

So what changed? What factors contributed to my ability to make this change happen? I believe that our actions rest on a foundation of inclination and motivation, as shown in the graphic at the top of this post. Here's what I mean by those terms in the context of a proposed change:

Inclination

Am likely to change?
Am I inclined or not to make this change?
How does it align with my life and my preferences?
Why might this process be easy or difficult for me?

Motivation

What are my goals?
What motivates me to make this change?
What optimal results do I expect?
What minimal results will I accept?

Action

What steps will result in forward motion?
What will encourage me to act?
How do I move from reflection to action?
And what will keep me moving ahead?

Here's a graphic representation:

This model certainly applies to the case of my newly discovered ability to exercise sustainably. In years past none of the actions I took led to lasting change because there was no foundation in place: I possessed neither the inclination nor the motivation to make that commitment.

But my changing (read: aging) body and intimations of mortality, as well as the realization that exercise isn't just enjoyable but is actually central to my happiness profoundly altered the context for this process. My actions now had a solid foundation to support them--and this is why a simple little tool like Don't Break the Chain has been so useful. The action of building a chain day by day and coloring in my calendar now builds upon an altered inclination to change and an enhanced motivation to change--so that action, and every other step I take to pursue this goal, has a much more profound impact than it would have had in the past.

I've had such success with changing my approach to exercise that I've recently decided to try changing my approach to sleep. I often read or write or just goof off late into the night, resulting in a fairly irregular sleep pattern. I've wanted to change this habit for years, but I've never been able to break it. But in the past few months I've felt the effects of insufficient sleep more acutely, and I've been hearing about a growing body of medical research that suggests that regular sleep is important for long-term physical and mental health. In other words, my inclination to change and my motivation to change have themselves changed--and I suspect that I'll be able to build on this foundation successfully going forward. Don't Break the Chain allows you to create multiple chains for different activities, and here's mine for a good night's sleep, which I started 2 days ago:

So far, so good.

(Here's a 4-slide PowerPoint file [57 KB] of the graphics above.)

Photo by quinn.anya. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.