We know we don’t consciously hold or act on our biases. We’d like to believe we don’t have them. And all of us expend a lot of energy to convince ourselves and others that this is so. (For an in-depth explanation on this topic, watch social psychologist Jonathan Haidt here: http://bit.ly/z9seKN

In spite of our best intentions, our biases exist, and they continue to do insidious harm in the workplace. Studies continue to validate what we already know: when it comes to hiring, paying and promoting people, it’s rarely objective.

Here are three situations where I often see it played out:

The new boss
One of my coachees recently experienced a classic scenario:
A successful executive, well-rewarded for the past 15 years, is suddenly on the wrong side of the bias fence. His new boss has a new regime in mind, and he’s not one of her inside players.

But the boss can’t say this out loud. Instead, she sets up a double-bind where he can’t possibly win. They agree he will coach and develop his under-performers – two people he inherited and would never have selected (sound familiar?). Their performance is hurting the team’s overall ranking, and he’s been told he must get rid of them by year’s end as part of the company’s forced ranking performance system. This places him squarely in a values dilemma: “How do I authentically coach these people through a development plan knowing I’ll be cutting them loose before they have time to show improvement?”

Meanwhile, his low team numbers are being used against him as his boss reworks her leadership team, even though there’s acknowledgement that he’s doing all he can under the circumstances to correct the inherited issues.

My hunch? His team numbers are irrelevant. She decided early that she wanted him out. Everything else becomes just a means to remove him from the team without any negative legal implications.

I suspect she feels she’s being completely objective in the process. As does he. Neither one of them would readily see the biases they both bring to their dynamic.

Gender bias
Yep, it’s alive and well. In spite of all the systems we set up to make pay, promotion and performance ratings look equitable, they just aren’t. And women leaders fully participate. A recent study from the Harvard Business Review gives us yet another glimpse into what we already know:  http://bit.ly/GCQ3h3

There are lots of ways we unconsciously compete and try to ensure our own organizational survival. We’ve gotten especially good at working the data so we feel we’re being fair and logical – even collaborative. It’s hard to recognize when decisions are becoming biased. It’s even harder to choose to point it out, especially when you’re part of the decision making group. It takes self-aware insight, and courage.

Peers that don’t like you
Okay, this can just get ugly. Just because we walk around in adult bodies doesn’t mean we left our junior high school selves behind.

It’s the little insinuation here, the questioning of skill there – those unexpected drill-down questions in front of senior managers meant to trip you up. The ones that could have been asked when you met with the person beforehand to review the presentation. Yea, that stuff.

What’s happening? Just the age-old attempt to diminish others, with a hope that it will somehow elevate the person doing the detracting? While most of us see through the most obvious examples of this, it’s not always so clear and straightforward. I’ve had countless coachees question their own sense of what’s going on: “I know it sounds like I’m being paranoid, but it sure feels like… ”

Since most of the people I work with are high-functioning, non-paranoid adults (as far as I can tell, anyway), together we follow their intuitive hunch to see if we can gain more clarity about what’s going on. We also seek to find more effective ways to interact with their detractor.

This leads us to the most important questions:
When is the detractor YOU? What can you do to make yourself more conscious of your unwitting biases? And in what situations are people trusting you most to uphold an objective meritocracy? How can you operate within this system at the highest levels of integrity and awareness?

“I strongly believe we must influence the work culture to really support women and men to combine career with family. Some weeks ago I attended a women’s leadership conference in Munich. There were several women in the plenary discussion sending out the message that ‘as a woman professional, if you want to pursue and advance in your career you need to work hard all day, and then, after putting the kids to bed, continue into the night. And you better count on working weekends.’

This is total bullshit! This is how we currently cut women out from pursuing careers, especially in technology!

The question is rather, ‘How can we influence the work culture so that men and women can work more effective? How do we create a culture where we do not force ourselves into hundreds of meetings and emails every day, working 12 plus hours a day.”

Her input has been very powerful as I think about the challenges women as leaders face, in general.

Here are three “stages” that immediately came to mind when I think about professional women moving from victimhood to powerful victor as they integrate (and even enjoy) career and family:

1. Get Past The Pissed-Off Stage

The first book on feminism I ever read was Women’s Reality: An Emerging Female System by Anne Wilson Schaef. In raising my awareness, it also raised my blood pressure for about three years as I experienced and observed gender inequities that didn’t seem to apply to, say, my husband.

The Pissed Off Stage provides necessary and important consciousness-raising and is a critical step. The problem, however, is when I see women get stuck there. Anger can sometimes be delicious to chew on. The problem is that the meal it’s devouring is our own soul.

2. Get Through The Sheer Exhaustion Stage

I have no magic formula for this except to encourage women to get over any Heroine Complex they’re hanging onto and ask for help. And be willing to pay for the best child care you can afford.

There’s no prize waiting at the end of your kids’ graduations for sacrificed identities. There are rewards for surrendering to the beauty of inevitable timings and knowing that you can strive to have it all as long as you know you can’t have it all at the same time. The best advice I ever received from a wise woman was “the best gift you give your kids is the best you.”

And this advice is equally valid for all the professional men I know, too.

Which leads me to a truth I think we too often miss: systems that support a woman’s career and family juggling act equally support men. It’s good for all of us, including those who employ us.

3. Enter the Claim Your Power Stage

It’s there waiting for you to notice it. Women are well-aligned with the new models of adaptive, agile leadership. Just a little bit of research will enlarge your picture of what’s possible. And what’s waiting to happen.

As soon as you know this, the benefits are there for the taking.

Some advice: find a tribe of professional women where you can grow and evolve. I personally belong to a long-standing group of women where a few of the members are 10-15 years older than me. They provide wisdom and gravitas that inspires and grounds me.

I also have the privilege of being part of a steering committee for a mentoring group called Woman to Woman sponsored by the Cal Turner program at Vanderbilt University. We’re a diverse group of female thought leaders committed to empowering women. And in the process, we not only mentor ourselves, we also move the needle on changing our cultures to be more livable places for professional women and men.

The irony of this blog post is that I’m writing it from Redmond, Washington where I’m working on a large project for Microsoft.

I respect Microsoft as an organization. And I deeply respect Bill Gates. But I never loved any of the many PCs I’ve owned. And I love my MacBook Air. Yes, I love a machine. Therein lies all the difference.

Apple captured my heart. And it required leadership powerful enough to generate a voluntary change in mindset and a shift in behaviors – including shelling out a lot of cash. This is the goal of a lot of leadership efforts, and as any leader will tell you, it’s incredibly difficult.

So did Apple win my heart because Steve Jobs was a touchy, feely kind of leader? Ah, no.

He did it by building an entire company focused on making my experience as a user as seamless and hassle-free as possible. Even fun. Even joyful.

The three key words in that paragraph: Fun. Joyful. Experience.

Why did I make the switch? I was intrigued by all the fuss.

I also wanted to force my own learning curve. As a middle-aged, non-technical professional, I’m aware that I’m forever at risk of thinking and acting like an old fart consultant. I bought a Mac to see if I was capable of working off a new platform. The existing operating system, while often painful, was known and comfortable. It was a way to live my own message: embrace the challenge of change as a way of being.

So, it happened. I successfully switched.

I adore the look and feel of my MacBook Air as I write these words – ditto for my iPhone and iPad on the table next to me. I love going to the Apple Store. I’m even a regular One-to-One client. It’s hard to overstate the significance of these sentences when you think of what it required. To write them, a company had to do some serious enticing.

Great leadership is about creating the conditions for voluntary engagement. Steve Jobs understood this, and did it well.

Here are a couple of video clips of Steve Jobs in his own words. I recommend investing a few minutes of your time to watch. He offers some great executive coaching.

In this first clip from a 2005 Commencement Speech at Standford University, Jobs touches on:

Connecting the dots;
Love and Loss;
Staying Hungry and Foolish; and
Death:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs

This second clip is on managing people. In this video, Jobs touches on the concept that you should be run by ideas, not hierarchy.

Amidst all the millions who are expressing their gratitude, admiration, and life changing (joyful) experiences today via Twitter, Facebook and all the other outlets likely to be accessed through Jobs-ian products, I would be remiss not to share mine too. I hope this post is a small tribute, and a reminder to us all…

Thank you, Steve.

This type of change requires not only making the changes themselves, but also tending the process of change for those around them.

Being the most effective leader in a change scenario requires “adaptive leadership,” a capacity I think is critical for leaders to develop.

Put simply, adaptive leadership provides a framework for dealing with complex challenges. The core premises distinguish technical change, i.e., problem solving the way we’re used to, from adaptive change, which requires that we develop an approach we’re NOT accustomed to.

In my experience, most organizational leaders are incredibly skilled at getting in the way of engaging in conversations from an adaptive point of view. To put it simply, they’re pretty bad at it.

There are lots of reasons why, but a key barrier is identified in this excerpt:

“Adaptive challenges are typically grounded in the complexity of values, beliefs, and loyalties rather than technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis.” **

Leaders attain positions of leadership because they’re exquisite problem solvers. Objective evaluation is second nature for them. Give them something complex and juicy and watch them light up.

However, they’ll go to great lengths to tamp down or avoid emotion-filled conversations. And emotion is exactly what adaptive change stirs up.

Why the avoidance? Frankly, the emotional space is unfamiliar territory for most leaders. They feel ill-equipped to handle other people’s emotions, let alone their own, and they fear what will happen if a perfectly familiar business or organizational conversation starts to spin out of control.

Emotions and control are the operative words here. Leaders will never be able to detach their team members or their colleagues from having emotion, nor will they ever have full control of a situation. Yet a lot of effort goes into doing both. It’s critically important to become aware when this ingrained way of operating is taking over.

To excuse themselves from adapting, leaders typically revert to habitual story-lines that keep them in a technical problem solving mindset. Here are four of them – see if any of these sound familiar to you:

Story #1: Where’s Waldo? **

This story is a long, convoluted one with lots of reasons explaining why things are the way they are. What you don’t hear in the story are any culpable references to the leader telling the story. The storytellers are in the picture somewhere but you’re hard-pressed to find them. And doing a search for them can be quite a career limiting move.

Story #2: Community of Jerks **

In this story, the focus is squarely placed on everyone else other than the leaders. It’s all about Them. You’ll know you’re listening to this story when you hear repeated references to They.

Example: “If only they would _________

a) get a clue
b) shut up during meetings
c) see things our way
d) stop rocking the boat
e) all of the above

…then we could get on with it. “They are the problem. It’s not me!”

Story #3: End World Hunger **

This is the utterly-unrealistic-but-sounds-really-gallant story you’ve probably heard in meetings. No one expects anyone to actually pull something off as grand as what this leader is pitching, but the leader hopes to get Hero Points for looking like s/he is trying to do something big and noble, and then stand blameless when nothing lasting really happens.

Story #4: Breakfast of Champions **

There’s nothing like organizational hubris to stop conversations from hitting the hot spots that can actually generate adaptive analysis. It’s a Friday Night Lights mentality: “We’ve tackled gigantic issues in the past, we’ll do it again, and we’re awesome! Let’s go!”

(“And don’t blame us after we leave if nothing is truly solved. It’s the inept coach’s fault!“)

Do any of these strike a familiar chord? If they do, then your organization is probably being thwarted from a deeper, more systemic approach – and ultimately a more effective approach – to addressing complex challenges.

Recognizing the difference between technical and adaptive challenges is the first step. I hope this blog post helps.

A great next place to go for further reading is this Harvard Business Review article called The Work of Leadership by Heifetz and Laurie.

For a more in-depth understanding, I highly recommend the book: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky. Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA. 2009.

If even one of these story lines niggled at you, let me know. You’re probably ready to take the dive into understanding and addressing adaptive challenges and change.

** from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifitz, Grashow, Linsky, pp. 70-71.

She made the leap necessary to recognize that how others perceived her at
work would trump any of her good intentions. This was a pivotal shift.

Every once in a while life kicks our butt.

The Proverbial Wake-Up Call comes, and it’s usually when we least expect it. How we choose to handle the jolt is a direct reflection of the character we have developed up to that moment – or the character we’ve neglected to develop.

For one of my new coaching clients, the wake-up call came in the form of an ultimatum: she had one last chance to get her act together or the company she worked for would give her a severance package and show her the door. As the primary income earner for her household, this was a stark reality. And as someone with an oversensitive soul, I wasn’t sure she could face up to what it would take to get herself through this situation.

She was being given the choice to engage in long overdue self-development.

Two-and-a-half months later: she’s made a complete turnaround – probably the most remarkable I’ve ever seen. Not only has she kept her job and renewed relationships with colleagues, she wrote up a proposal for a totally new, more effective position for herself. The president of the company loves it.

And most inspiring is the life she is re-crafting for herself. Once she got a whiff of self-empowerment she immediately applied it to all areas of her life, including her relationships at home. She is re-visioning her life, and has never felt better about herself.

So how’d she do it?

• Start with “What Is”
We had the benefit of no-holds-barred feedback from her HR Director, which reflected the perceptions of her managers and colleagues. This gave us a glaringly clear view of what we were dealing with.

Her HR Director was honest, kind, and experienced enough to know the wisdom of giving a person another chance to see if they had it in them to step up to the plate.

• Establish a few ground rules
In this case, we agreed that there would be:

• No victim speak
• No getting teary-eyed at work. It was greatly hurting her credibility, as well as approachability
• No CYA emails and long explanations to justify behavior

There’s no question that she has a legitimate version of the unfolding events that led to this point, but focusing on trying to be right would not aid her development, or help her keep her job. Instead, she was able to agree to focus on her own contributing behaviors and what she could directly influence to make effective changes.

She made the leap necessary to recognize that how others perceived her at work would trump any of her good intentions. This was a pivotal shift.

• Use good self-assessments and 360s
It’s important to know when to administer an assessment tool. After working with her for a month she took the Hogan self-assessments. This gave us rich fuel for insight and application. A few weeks later, with solid footing and renewed confidence in herself, she was ready for a 360. People had already started responding to her more positively in the office as a result of the hard work she had done on making personal behavioral shifts, so the most recent interactions with her were front-of-mind for the people providing feedback. And this would give her a more accurate view of current state as we moved forward.

• Recognize that self-development is always life development
There’s no separating professional growth from personal growth. Her life at home is reflecting her enhanced sense of self worth as much, if not more, than what’s happening for her at work.

• Don’t be surprised by the surprises!
I have never worked with someone who was more ready for his or her own development than this client. She is an inspiration to us all – especially me.

Most of her colleagues had written her off. It’s often easier to think about replacing someone than to engage in the hard work of developmental support. In this case, having her leave would have been an egregious mistake. Through the insightful wisdom of her exceptional HR Director and some outside coaching support, she has restored her reputation and mended relationships. And she’s ready to focus on living a profound life.

She could have said ‘no’ to all of this. But she had the courage to say ‘yes.’

What would you have said?

W2 - Britt & Drew

As some of you have noticed, I’ve taken a hiatus from blogging this summer. It has to do with my daughter’s wedding. If any of you have ever been the parent of an offspring’s wedding, you’re already empathizing. Mother-of-the-bride. An amazing thing. And equally wondrous is being mother-of-the-groom. That happened three months ago. Yes, MOTG in April and MOTB in July. The timing was probably inevitable – their weddings, like their birth dates, ended up being much closer together than anyone, especially me, ever anticipated, too.

In any event, suffice it to say that I’ve been immersed in a lot of wedding energy lately. As a result, I have become an inadvertent expert on the dos and don’ts of successful, outdoor weddings. Let me share a few tidbits of advice. And before you think this has nothing to do with being a business leader, think again. You’ll find that most of this applies to life.

Lori’s 10-Point Wedding Primer:

1. Keep the number of parents to less than 8.

For Britt & Drew’s July wedding (which I will refer to as “W2” from now on to keep things simple) we had 4 pairs of parents – yes, there were eight of us. This is at the limits of workability. Take my word for it. For “W1” (Jake and Mary Katharine’s April wedding) we had merely 6.

To get a feel for the complexity involved, picture a group of middle-aged adults stumbling around meeting one another for the first time, putting faces with names, and trying to remember the network of relationships that brought everyone together in the first place. You hear yourself explaining things with sentences like: “We held the wedding at my new son-in-law’s mother’s husband’s family’s lake house on Lake Huron.” I ended up shortening this to “my son-in-law’s mother’s lake house” for simplicity’s sake, but don’t make this modification lightly. Territoriality amongst a congealed group of ex-husbands and ex-wives can be tricky.

2. Ensure there are air-conditioned accommodations for 90+ degree weather.

The location of this Michigan lake house could not have been more stunning. It sits atop a lookout point that offers a 270-degree panoramic view of Lake Huron.

W1 - Jake and Mary Katharine

It was also built in 1937.

Air conditioning never crossed anyone’s mind. And why should it – the chances of 7 consecutive days of 90+ degree weather in Au Gres, Michigan is miniscule. Which is why, of course, it was destined to happen for W2.

So here’s what I now KNOW FOR SURE: trying to tame thick, frizzy hair in high humidity, applying make-up to an over-heated face, and squeezing into Spanx is impossible. Therefore, just give it up and go tend to the bride. It’s a lot more fun and the results are stunning. She will never be more radiant. Of course the downside is that your own damp dishevelment is captured FOREVER in the THOUSANDS of pictures everyone takes and posts on Facebook. But it’s worth it.

3. Delegate with abandon.

If there’s something you really love to do, great – do it. Otherwise, leave the centerpieces and cake table strategy to the experts. Or to your children’s amazing friends.* This is essential unless you want your lack of flair for covering straw-bales-as-guest-seating-in-darling-calico-fabric-plus-perfectly-tied-bows exposed in all its inadequacy (W1). You will want to push this off to as many other willing and dexterous hands as possible. Egos are tender things and there’s a limit to how many times you can admit to yourself “I have no idea what I’m doing” in a condensed period of time.

* See point #4

4. Have kids who have lots of friends.

These cannot be just casual buddies. We’re talking soulfully connected, physically strong, tireless, hilarious, resourceful, clever, well-employed, well-vehicled friends. Because you will depend on them for all the last-minute details you DIDN’T think of. Which will be 5 or 6 times the number of things you DID think of.

5. Pretend you’re taking an exotic trip.

Never underestimate the power of delusion as an effective strategy. In this case, imagine you’ve entered an intriguing, foreign destination: a country called WEDDING. And in spite of the fact you’re going there because of people you know VERY WELL, you will have no idea what language is being spoken in this land or how to engage with its local customs. An adventure! A very, very expensive adventure!

The Land of Wedding reminded me of a time Craig and I traveled to Phi Phi (wonderfully pronounced pee-pee and then followed by a giggle) Island, Thailand. We took a boat three hours off the mainland to be dumped off on a beach with our 500 pounds of over-size luggage – literally. We dragged our stuff through the sand to a thatch-roofed cottage where we were immediately warned not to drink the water, and then went to work on the business of relaxing. Because we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves. We were on a remote, enviably romantic island inhabited by only a few indigenous Sea Gypsies. But for the first couple of days we just mucked about in varying states of oblivious wonder.

It’s a lot like that.

6. Don’t wait to take dance lessons the week of the wedding.

I believe in miracles, but this isn’t one that’s likely to happen before the wedding reception. If you don’t already know how to dance, taking one lesson the Monday before you leave for Saturday’s ceremony (W1) will not save you. In contrast, for W2, we spent the Monday beforehand going for a boat ride and drinking a couple of bottles of wine. We’re fast learners. So, if you’re an unskilled dancer, just pick a song you love, sing along while you dance with your son or daughter, and pray no one posts the video clip on YouTube.

7. Clean out the septic system.

When anticipating what to plan for in advance of both W1 and W2, septic issues did not come to mind. It’s our own fault – we had our chance. We learned in W1 that several hundred additional flushes will take a residential plumbing system to its limit. This was also true for W2’s lake house built in 1937. In both cases, it was caught in the nick of time, but it was a smelly touch-and-go there for a couple of days. Just remember, you have to be a prescient genius to anticipate all the things that can go awry in the Land of Wedding.

8. Use Port-a-Potties

A corollary to point #7. Since surprise sewage issues can sneak up on you at any moment, you’ll want this alternative in place well in advance. Be sure to spring for the best ones Acme Sewage Systems can offer. Your goal is for guests to emerge and comment on their surprisingly pleasant port-a-potty experience.

Note: don’t forget to put police tape across all the bathroom doors inside the house.

9. Start looking for a mother-of-the-groom-or-bride dress today.

It doesn’t matter how old or what stage your child is currently in, now is not too early. I’ve been a businesswoman for over twenty years and have had to noodle my way through a lot of sticky situations. But none of it compares to this process. Think “Prom 40 Years Later” and you start to get the picture. Yes, it’s scary. And if you live in the U.S. South (like Tennessee), you’ll need to multiply this warning by 3, bless your heart. I discovered that telling a saleswoman I was looking for a dress because I was the “Mother of the Bride” uses dangerous words. It clearly inspires scenes from Gone With the Wind, and the results are equally tragic. I’ll think more about this tomorrow.

So, last but not least . . .

10. Savor the moments.

These will come in many forms when you least expect them.

Like when your son:

• asks you to go check on his bride while she’s getting ready to see if she’s happy
• asks you to cut the tag off the suit he’ll be married in in 30 minutes
• glows with pure love when he sees his bride approaching.

Like when your daughter:

• asks you to walk her down the aisle, too
• asks you to be the one to add the final touches to her hair
• dances with barefoot abandon during her entire reception.

Like when your new daughter-in-law:

• wears purple shoes for the ceremony
• closes her eyes while singing How Great Thou Art
• chooses wedding pies instead of a wedding cake.

Like when your new son-in-law:

• arrives at the ceremony in a vintage Chris Craft boat
• includes the dog as part of the ceremony
• tears up as he watches your daughter approach him at the altar.

Priceless treasures.

It’s been an amazing summer. Now back to work!

• an organization
• a movement
• a philosophy.

I would add a few additional observations:

• An organization is a non-human entity created to get something done. Whatever “humanity” it embodies is a function of the collective intent and energy people bring to the enterprise – which can be good, bad, or most often, and worst, indifferent. The organization is just the container – leadership is what drives its intent and opportunity for collaborative good.

• A movement is what most corporations are actually asking for when they talk about creating cultural transformation and change. They just wouldn’t think to use this word which is often equated with social justice and not-for-profit efforts. And yet it fits beautifully: the goal of employee engagement is to engender full-on commitment. This will only happen if people feel connected to something greater than themselves. Which is all about heart. That’s a movement. Whether this does or doesn’t happen is a direct result of the conscious awareness and intent of the organization’s leaders.

• A philosophy is wobbly. Interpretations mutate and distort over time. It doesn’t take long for a word representing a philosophy to mean completely different things to different groups of people. We are rife to make the meaning suit our own purposes. So to confuse philosophy with a movement can be misleading and outright dangerous. A quick look at the mainstream parties in American politics are perfect examples: try coming up with a unifying definition of progressive or conservative. And connect them to what each word meant when they were first brought into our ideological lexicon. Can’t be done.

Thinking of employee engagement as a movement, something with a soul-beating heart, will trump any organizational strategy or philosophical manifesto every time.

Would love your thoughts.

PS: To see Seth Godin’s blog post go to: http://bit.ly/m1YSmb

What was most satisfying was seeing this group realize its own power. They came to an awareness that they don’t have to wait for their executive leadership team to model or lead the way on this first. We watched them shift from a mindset of wait-and-see to one of self-empowerment: a stance of ‘we can influence the overall culture by creating our desired cultures right now from where we already are.’

Jake is an expert on activating groups of people, moving them from passive awareness to committed action.  He teaches a whole continuum of engagement that helped the group and me understand what is needed. Here are a few highlights:

• Employee engagement:
  • combines story, meaningful action, and builds community
  • is an intentional choice leaders must make or it won’t happen
  • invites employees to be co-creators in processes that affect them
  • is fueled by real-time transparency, i.e., the sharing of information about what’s happening as it’s happening
  • requires some loss of control
  • engages the whole person: logically, emotionally, ethically

One of the best practical take-aways for each person was a chance to develop and rehearse their own compelling story. They all told a story of their life’s circumstances that had brought them to this organization and shaped their leadership. These were some of the most heartfelt, moving stories I’ve heard in a business context. This one, simple act generated an important shift of connection within the team. They all agreed that the culture they most want to create, collectively, is one of a caring family. This is especially perfect for them since they’re in the healthcare business; they deal with life and death issues every day. The question they asked themselves was, “If one of my family members was sick, would I bring them to one of our facilities?”

The biggest lesson for them all was voiced by one of their team members: “We don’t need to wait for permission from the executive team to create the culture we want. We can begin making this happen now. Let them be inspired by us.”

Amen.

Do all that you can now, right where you are. Don’t wait for a change in title or position. Or executive permission. Create the conditions now. Be the team that other teams notice and are attracted to. And then watch how inspiration trickles up. Especially if your senior leadership team members are the ones most needing to learn.

My thanks goes out to this group of healthcare leaders for sharing so authentically. What a great and memorable workshop.

And if you’re reading this, please, I’d love it if you shared a time when you were fully engaged as an employee, or volunteer, or human being. Or a time when you engaged others fully, and how you did it. It’d be great to learn together!

I was mediating a session between two clients yesterday. We started by setting the stage for them to share their individual perspectives regarding a touchy work situation. Lots of emotions at stake for both of them. They were expecting, and prepared for, a difficult conversation. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, however, I watched as several light bulbs went off in the managing director’s head. He suddenly saw a way forward that was filled with positive, productive potential. The moment was clearly visible: they could work this out, and it was becoming more tangible by the second. His face took on a glow, literally. And his ideas were coming in rapid-fire succession.

The entire energy in the room transformed. The mood took a 180 – from tentative, skeptical distrust to engaged, genuine regard.

The effect on the other manager was equally visible. You could see his heart open up from the appreciation coming from his boss. It was a powerful reminder of how much we all yearn to be valued. And a reminder of how important it is as leaders to consistently and frequently convey a message of “I value your talent and contributions.” It’s a simple and sure-fire way to ignite motivation and tap people’s discretionary energy. And it’s a deeply caring thing to do.

So, my main role in all this? I pretty much just helped to create the conditions. And then I served as a witness – which I think was an essential catalyst. A good thing to remember.

I’m writing this at 35,000 feet on leg #1 of a hop skip through Brussels, Tunbridge Wells, and Istanbul; then back to Nashville by next Wednesday.

Not an unusual itinerary – I know many of you can relate. As I was getting ready for this particular trip, it dawned on me how prep time has become a way of being. So, in the spirit of sharing best practices with all of you professional road warriors, I thought I’d jot down a few pearls of wisdom from my own repertoire of experience:

1. Gather the Lists
I start out with one list per country, per client in a neat little notebook.

Unfortunately, my brain can only adhere to this plan for about ten minutes. The stuff I need to remember tends to enter my head at random and inconvenient times. This, in turn, generates small bits of crumpled paper and post-it notes with barely legible handwriting strewn throughout any location I might have passed through. And as it happens, it is on these bits of paper that I capture my juiciest ideas. If I don’t catch these thoughts as they flit by, they’re immediately whisked away to the ethosphere of Really Good Ideas But Lost To You Forever.

The more inconvenient the time and setting, the better the quality of my flits: driving in heavy traffic, waiting in line for a latte, getting a manicure (this can be especially tricky), aha-ing in the middle of silent, congregational prayer. Multiple purses also wreak havoc on this system. The trick is having a predictable mental map for where you think you remember putting the bits of paper.

The squirrels behind my house inspire me…if they can find their nuts, surely I can gather mine.

2. Have a Staging Area
Here’s the beautiful thing about staging areas: they can be ANYWHERE. I personally have four major locations: any horizontal surface in my office, my bedroom, my bathroom counter and the kitchen table. To an outsider this might just look like a disorganized mess. But for those of you with experienced, trained eyes, you’ll discern the underlying order amidst the chaos.

Hang on, I had something else to add here, it’s on a bit of paper here at the bottom of my backpack . . . .

Oh yes,

3. Consolidate the Piles
This only happens on Travel Day. Doing it any sooner and the assessment material you pulled together for Client 1 may get lost in Client 3’s Culture Change materials. You’ll look and look, certain that you ACTUALLY HAD THIS IN YOUR HANDS, wonder if you’re going crazy, and not find any of it until you open up the files for Client 2’s Employee Engagement workshop.

4. Keep Your Clients Straight
As “Consolidate the Piles” clearly shows, you can see how easily keeping our clients straight can go awry. While it might seem an obvious best practice, it’s amazing how quickly three consecutive customized client agendas can start to morph into ONE BIG ENGAGEMENT.

5. Back Up Your Laptop Before Leaving Home
Okay. There’s just nothing funny about a crashed hard drive.

6. Never Fully Unpack
Ever.The momentary thrill you get out of actually putting your luggage away is not worth what it feels like when you go to your roller board in your Singaporean hotel to get your multi-purpose adapter so you can use your curling iron on your frizzy hair that you let dry au naturel and all you have is the slanted plug that only fits in AUSTRALIA. Or when you have a piece of bok choy caught in your teeth and the dental floss you carefully tracked down in a rare duty free drug store in Frankfurt is NOT in the inside pocket where you KNOW you last put it.  While these may seem like minor events now, they are NOT minor when it’s 2:00 a.m., you’ve just gotten to your hotel room, eager for those four luxurious hours of horizontal sleep before you need to get ready for your early-starting gig. In moments like these, dental floss is a VERY BIG DEAL.Actually, this segues nicely into my next pearl of wisdom:

7. Don’t put your suitcases away
Serious road warriors do not have a place where they store their luggage. This is because our luggage is an integral and necessary part of our bedroom décor. Each piece has its particular place. Which means we also have handy staging areas for whenever the flitting to-do list items pop into our brains.  I can stick that extra pair of pantyhose in my outside pocket WHILE I’M THINKING ABOUT IT. This has the added benefit of not needing to put this on a bit of paper that I then need to remember to gather later on my master list! And there’s no consolidating the pantyhose with another pile! Striving for efficiencies like these is evidence that you’re moving ever closer to multi-trip preparation mastery.And since luggage is a critical part of the prepping process, here’s one last gratuitous piece of advice:

8. Select Your Luggage Wisely
You have two simple choices: either go to Big Lots and get the cheapest bags you can possibly find. Or ante up for Briggs & Riley. Both options are perfect – and you’ll spend about the same amount of money in the end, either way. Why? Because what we know with certainty is that on your bag’s inaugural trip through the checked baggage process of any of the world’s airlines (no exceptions) it will come out at baggage claim, wherever you are in the world, missing some part of itself. This is a universal truth. Like disappearing socks in the washing machine, luggage zippers are destined to lose their tabs.

So it’s a question of satisfaction.

The advantage of Big Lots is that you get to access your most regressed self. After about 5 trips of increasing materiel deterioration, you can just throw that sucker away. Or if you’re in a big European city, say Brussels, you can put it out on the sidewalk and see how long it takes to disappear. (If it takes longer than 45 minutes, you live in a nicer part of town than we do.) Then, if by some miracle your bag is still zipping and keeping things dry after ten trips, you have the added bonus of knowing you have more than gotten your money’s worth.

The Briggs & Riley option is also highly satisfying – once you recover from the shock of paying for it. Expensive, yes. But your luggage comes with a LIFETIME GUARANTEE. And they mean it. I have one suitcase, it’s actually with me on this trip, that I bought in 1990. I don’t know how many zippers it’s had replaced – 5? 10? Let’s just say that my B&R dealer and I are on a first-name basis. She knows me by my bag. Kind of like a dog groomer recognizes the owner of her favorite pooch, I’m the owner on the other end of my leash-like, still-functioning retractable handle. The bag has become something of my Traveling Talisman. I figure as long as it keeps going, I’ve got a chance. The wheels are irritatingly squeaky, but then, so are my knees.

So, I hope you feel encouraged and enlightened by my missive. Remember, what’s most relevant in all of this is to HAVE A SYSTEM. Even the illusion of thinking you have a system is better than no illusion at all.

Okay, tomorrow, Tunbridge Wells. More when I hit Istanbul.

[PS: Would love to hear your trip prepping best practices!]