Can you "teach an old dog new tricks"?

I get this a lot: Can you really teach an old dog ("like me") new tricks? It seems everyone, at times, doubts his or her ability to learn, to develop, to change anything about oneself regardless of the desire to do so. Each of us is capable of learning, achievement and living up to the adventure of change at any age.

We are, without question, extremely malleable in our early years when learning comes fairly easy and change is readily accepted. But the phenomenon of “neural plasticity”—the brain’s ability to generate new cells, forge new connections, and strengthen old ones—persists into adulthood. Mental development helps your brain produce new connections between nerve cells that allow them to communicate with one another, thus helping you store and retrieve information more easily, regardless of your age.

With physical development, a steady program of exercise helps to reduce the gradual loss of muscle mass that occurs in the human body with age. And it makes you feel good. The brain operates on a similar principal. Our minds need exercise and without mental development goals we cannot consider ourselves to be "fit" or "balanced." Mental exercise keeps your mind sharp and agile; it helps you think well and retain mental acuity into your later years. The extent of your mental workout may be as revealing in conversation as the results of your physical workout are in your swim suit!

Examples of mental development goal categories might be "to continually challenge myself by learning new skills," or "to develop a reading program," or more broadly, "to exercise my mind regularly." Specific examples of mental development goals include "read 12 biographies in the next 12 months," or "include puzzles, memorization exercises, reading, games, and engaging conversations in my daily routine."

Whether you are an old dog or a young one, now is the time to develop your mental muscle. Anyone can learn new tricks. What is your action plan?

Extra! Email Subscriptions now working

My good friend Dave Drook is always looking out for my best interests. Today he let me know that my Feedburner email subscription tool on this blog was not working properly. So thanks to Dave and a little time doing techie stuff (let's just say I am somewhere on this side of a technical genius), the email subscription service is working again. Of course, I encourage you to use it and pass my link along to your colleagues and friends.

As for Dave, you should look him up. Besides being a coaching client of mine for some time now, a master salesperson and all-around GREAT guy, he is also a regional VP of sales for Halo/Lee Wayne and the source of my marketing (merchandising) support. Check out his products at http://www.davedrook.leewaynecatalog.com/.

Thanks, Dave!

Great questions help us discover what is right

While most people want to grow personally and develop in their careers, they are not used to being coached. And after years of being taught, trained, managed, educated, brow-beaten and doubted, many people have a hard time with the concept of coaching, let alone the most critical aspect of coaching - asking great questions. Most training is about teaching skills and the "right answers" to help people improve their work. Most managers answer questions and ask too few. Our parents, our teachers, our colleagues, friends and bosses have doubted us at critical times in our lives. Out of habit, we expect - and are expected by others - to have all the answers, so we are afraid to ask the right questions.

Great coaching focuses on asking questions. Following are a few reasons.

First, even when dissatisfied with our results, we tend to become so attached to our current thinking or methods that learning "another way" feels much like we have done something wrong. As a result, traditional training is perceived as judgmental lecturing or frivolous play and, frankly, much of the time this is true. But when we are given the opportunity to respond to thoughtful, open-ended questions, the judgement is missing and we feel more comfortable to treat issues seriously and earnestly respond.

Second, a common assumption in both corporate training and management practices is that confrontation motivates change. In fact, research shows that confrontation can actually increase unwanted behaviors.

Master influencers including bosses, parents, and effective coaches, replace judgment with empathy and replace lectures with questions.

Skillful use of non-directive questions helps people examine what is most important to them. Questions open us to the changes in our lives that might be necessary to live according to what we value most. When I listen instead of teach, my clients DISCOVER what they must do. They discover what is right and they make the necessary changes.

For example, I am currently coaching a vice president of sales who struggles to stay on track with his long-term goals that sometimes create short-term conflict. I ask him about his purpose and long-term goals, if those remain important priorities, and he gains clarity and renewed focus. I am also helping an organization develop a customer loyalty strategy. I ask lots of questions about what customers want most, what gets in the way, and what management and employees must change to create a service culture that keeps customers coming back for more.

I could teach them a lot, but there is much more they are discovering on their own by answering my tough questions.

Creating the Significant & Productive Career

What can you do to ensure the next part of your career will be significant and productive?

So many times, I have found that simply writing about what I am thinking, dreaming of, or stuck on gives me clarity of purpose. Start a journal to clearly articulate what "significant and productive" would look like for you and answer these questions:

• What would you be doing? What achievements would you list?
• With whom?
• What would be significant?
• How would your work and life be different?
• Why would you choose this work?
• How would you feel if your work was "significant and productive"?
• What would it sound like if someone described the results of your productivity?
• What would this mean for you personally? For your business? For the people you serve? For those you love?
• How will you measure your significance or productivity?
• What do others value most about you? What are you doing about it?

I am reminded of my favorite passage in all of literature, from W. Somerset Maugham's introduction to The Razor's Edge:

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

As you continue to consider the next phase of your career, I encourage you to consider how and in what way your character is "strong and sweet" and how these characteristics affect your choices - how you apply yourself and the affect this has on others. When you begin to see your career as a series of days filled with passion and focused action toward a meaningful purpose that serves other people...well, you will most assuredly have begun the next phase of your life with significance and productivity by any standard.

Motivating "passive" team members

How can I motivate passive team members who are resistant to changes and see themselves as "good enough" at what they do?

Two tough questions any leader must consider are:

1. "How do I motivate people to work on their development?"
2. "How do I make sure people work on the right things?"

Improve your conversations with employees. Begin with appreciative inquiry. Focus on what is working and build on existing strengths - the good things. Get people talking about their dreams, goals and struggles. Stimulate people to gather their own information for change. Ask questions like:

• How do you know your strengths?
• What can you do to be sure?
• What can you do to get better? (to be better?)
• What do you want that you haven't yet achieved?
• What seems just beyond your reach?
• What do you think might be getting in your way?

Offer objective feedback in these conversations. Highlight consequences of behavior, both good and bad. If they are defensive, frame your observations as opinions for them to consider. Your goal is to improve understanding, not provide them with “the truth”. Teach people how to listen to feedback. Let others know you are serious about considering and using feedback.

Ask direct, specific questions to elicit precise feedback, e.g. “Tell me how you…?” Keep asking, “What else?” until they say, “That’s all.” Don’t defend or argue, just thank people for their input. Offer personal goals as well as organizational standards and expectations to prioritize development efforts.

Keep the conversation alive and maturing. Establish a regular process for sharing feedback with your team. Invite people to have experienced and peer mentors and coaches. Challenge people to consider their real development barriers and develop solutions with your support. Consider additional coaching for them.

Ask for a free white paper on "How to Motivate Employees" at askthecoach@pdncoach.com.

What to do when team work is not "just fine"

So many managers, owners and team leaders ask me to help them with developing their teams at work. A common struggle is the difficulty in gauging how the work team really feels about their group dynamics. Here are a few brief suggestions to help leaders evoke better evaluations from team members than "all is fine".

First, make sure you have clearly measurable goals and milestones that allow you and your team members use to track project outcomes. Does everyone know their role in achieving these objectives? Are these expectations shared and discussed among team members on a regular basis? These are the basics - yet too often the root cause of many inhibitors to effective team work is the lack of shared goals, expectations and attitudes.

Here's one way to help get the "straight scoop" on group process and keep your team motivated to perform at their very best: Meet with each individual on your team. Ask each person the same two questions:

1. What is going well?
2. What could we do to make it better?

Simply ask and then listen carefully (that means stop talking) for comments and ideas. These simple questions will help you and your team gauge how things are going and identify specific actions for continuous improvement.

Start with individual discussions. Then begin to repeat these same two questions to the group at the end of each team meeting. Don't inappropriately fear conflict that may arise from discussing such questions; conflict handled correctly is the seed for innovation and growth. Encourage constructive, critical thinking and sharing. Acknowledge their input. Act upon it quickly, if necessary. Hold team members accountable for solutions, too. You are creating a culture where new ideas, constructive criticism and personal responsibility are welcome and appreciated.

Consistently ask these two questions and you will be surprised at a) how much you learn from the process and b) how much goodwill you will build with each team member by simply taking the time to carefully listen to what he or she has to say.

Team cultures often suffer when team members lose their common sense of purpose or develop beliefs that other team members have gone astray. Checking in with these two questions gives your team the means to stay the course, develop shared attitudes and expectations as well as actively engage in the constant improvement of team effectiveness and performance.

How can I get ahead in my work and career?

Ah, the American Dream, to "get ahead" of the competition. Really, though, get ahead of whom? The common life question of "getting ahead" makes work sound like a race, so an underlying question must be, "Who are you racing?" If your life is a competition, there will be winners and losers, and you will not always be the winner!
What if you thought of yourself as a leader instead of just a competitor? If you set the course for your own life, how can you lose? How would this new mindset reshape your goals? How would that reroute your quest to obtain your goals? What, specifically, are your goals with your work and career?

"Getting ahead" asks the question
"What must I do?" to compete and win.

Leadership asks the question
"How must I be?" to serve the winners
around me and
create the results we all want.

Leadership is self-expression that adds value through relationships. How are you expressing yourself at work? How are you allowing your career to be an expression of the person you aim to be? How will you add value through your relationships? How are you valuable to others? If you value your career, then explore ways you can express yourself differently to add more value through your work and to the world around you.

To be a winner you must defeat others. To be a leader you must help others succeed.

What Should I Expect from you as my Coach? Part Three

So far, I have listed 10 things to expect from me as your coach. Here I conclude my list of basic expectations. I share these with every new or returning client, although I work with each of my clients to ensure our relationship fulfills their unique expectations as well.

1. Expect me to be here for you. I want to hear it all. If you have a personal problem, are upset with something, are just starting to realize something big, or cannot wait to share a breakthrough, call me ANYTIME. I am your coach each and every day and will continue to be. You can call me, email me, and fax me. I am also a father, a husband, loyal to all of my clients, and active in my communities. If I cannot talk when you call me, we will arrange a time.



2. And in closing: If at any time either one of us decides to discontinue the coaching relationship, the relationship will be immediately dissolved. You are at free will. I am here to support, assist, mentor, guide, and encourage you but all decisions and actions are ultimately yours and yours alone to make. Many of my clients retain me month after month, year after year. All of my clients know they can count on me long after any formal business relationship ends.

I hope the expectations I share with my clients will help you in choosing a coaching relationship that delivers powerful results, is satisfying and fulfilling. If you are looking to achieve more for yourself, seek to enhance your team cohesiveness and performance, or need to establish or improve a positive organizational culture, then I would like to be your coach. Contact me any time. You can expect me to be there for you.

What should I expect from you as a coach? Part Two

Last time, I listed five things to expect from me as your coach and here I list five more.

1. You will learn a process for crystallizing, planning and achieving personal and business goals, inspiring you to act from a stronger sense of purpose.


2. You will develop an Action Plan for your goals and develop the skills needed to follow your plan to completion.


3. If I have a sense about something and I believe you are open to it, I will share with you what I am feeling and make specific suggestions on how to deal with the situation. If I am not sure, I will say so. Always use the best of what I say and use your own judgment.


4. I will provide fieldwork based on what I sense is needed, where I believe gremlins need to be cleaned up, steps on goals that need to be taken and things that need to be done to take care of yourself. I will also work with you in developing fieldwork appropriate for you at the time. I often request that my clients come up with their own fieldwork.


5. When I hear a funny tone in your voice, or hear you say something that I just cannot understand or seems off, I will question you about it. Often, it is these small moments that offer the chance to resolve something, move through something or remove something that is standing in your way.
   
   Next time, I will conclude the list of expectations that I share with any new client.

What should I expect from a coach? Part One

I cannot speak for other coaches, but I can share what you should expect from me. In fact, over the next three posts I will share 12 things to expect from me as your coach.

1. I enjoy my clients; they are all growing, successful and willing, and I am assisting them to further their personal and professional lives, as well as their businesses. Expect for both of us to enjoy our relationship. You won't be my client because you need me; you want me in your life to support you in getting from where you are to where you want to be.


2. Expect a process which will help you to develop the skills, attitudes, habits, goals and purpose that can propel you, your career and your business to higher levels of achievement.


3. If you are hiring me, then you are probably ready to do and be your best. If you are not doing your best, I will request that you do.


4. I prefer NEVER to "tell" anyone anything. I help you discover for yourself. With your permission, I will ask you many questions and sometimes make direct requests that help you become more focused than you have ever been before.


5. As a result of our coaching relationship expect to become one who turns dreams into goal-directed action, while others wait to follow.

Next time, look for more of what to expect from me as your coach, or call me today for a free initial coaching session at toll-free (877) 962-0500.

Make 2009 a Very Special Year

What if you made this year about exploring the limits of your ability to experience life and add value to the world around you? Approach your question from four perspectives. First, if you could try anything new this year what would it be? Choose a specific goal in this category then approach it like a true beginner. That means you don't know much and must learn a great deal, which is difficult for many people to consider (especially "grown-ups"). Ask questions, research, read, try, try again, be willing to fall down and get up again, practice, practice, practice.

Second, start climbing your own "Mount Everest". I once told my coach that my peak experience was helping people discover and reach their loftiest goals. Her response:

"How will your life be different

when you climb your own Mount Everest?"

Stretch yourself to pursue your wildest dream this year. Your life will be transformed, especially if that dream somehow serves others.

Third, nearly everyone has a problem to be solved. Identify a problem that, once solved, would add value to the world around you. It is amazing how picking up the "litter" where you live or work can brighten the days of those who live and work near you.

Finally, consider your strengths and those experiences you find most fulfilling. Then focus your days on using those strengths to serve others. Learn, achieve and serve to make this a very special year.

Inspiration Ethics - The Value of Integrity

This is a copy of the latest installment in my "Inspiration Ethics" series of articles available through Ezine Articles -- Do you have your own code of ethics? What if your core values were obvious in your daily actions and behavior? How would you be different? In this article, learn what integrity can really mean when practiced. Integrity is the glue that binds every other virtue.

Integrity - Noun; Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code; the state of being unimpaired; soundness; the quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

The date is January 16, 2009. The day after US Airways Flight 1549 pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger of Danville, CA, maneuvered his crowded passenger jet over New York City and ditched it in the Hudson River - successfully. All 155 passengers and crew are safe and miraculously escaped major injury - just bumps and bruises really. National media is abuzz with reports and first-hand interviews with passengers, now all safe, warm and dry, along with their rescuers and safety experts describing the ordeal. NBC dubbed the accident "Miracle on the Hudson".

Pause now. Think about your values as if you had to list and describe them. What are your core values? If you are like most individuals and organizations Integrity shows up on your list of values. But what does it mean, this word, 'integrity' (perhaps the ultimate virtue)? What does it mean to you? How does your value for integrity show up for others daily? How is it you developed your integrity? How might you further develop this quality? Why does it matter?

For most of us, integrity means something like "doing what you say you will do", or "how you act when no one is looking". These are good tests of integrity, but don not really explain how one develops integrity. Structural integrity for a building is defined as "uncompromised ability to safely resist the required loads". Structural integrity of a person could be defined as "uncompromised ability to appropriately resist challenges to virtue". How do we develop this steadfast adherence to a strict moral code, this 'sound' response to difficult circumstances?

Like most things we do well, integrity comes from practice. In fact, the proper manner with which to refer to the quality of integrity as a human value would be "to practice integrity". A person speaks and acts with integrity out of practice. Integrity is the result of preparation and choice, when one has lived long enough to have recognized one's own innate capacity to act on whim, caprice or selfishness rather than deeply-held principle. Integrity comes from training and increases with the quality, length and adherence to the intent of that training. Integrity follows solid neural pathways, developed over time, that stimulate certain attitudes and habits, which produce seemingly instinctual right actions. But these actions are not based on animal instinct; right actions result from human desire and practice.

My favorite value-based definition of leadership is "authentic self-expression that adds value through relationships". This includes relationships to both people and events. When self-expression begins to consistently add value over time, through every human encounter, through every decision and through every split-second reaction to events, then you have integrity.

Aspire to have integrity: practice discerning what is right, saying that you will do right, how and why you will do right, and doing so whether or not someone else is paying attention.

You can bet there are at least 154 people in this world who are thankful for the value Chesley Sullenberger has added through their brief relationships. What do "Sully" Sullenberger and Flight 1549 have to do with integrity? Sullenberger is reportedly an U.S. Air Force Academy grad who flew F-4 fighter planes in the 1970s while in the Air Force. He started flying commercial jets in the 1980s. "He is about performing that airplane to the exact precision to which it is made," says the wife of her hero-husband. In addition to working for US Airways, he runs a safety consulting firm focused on the psychology of keeping airline crews functioning in the face of crisis. He has been an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. I understand he is also certified to fly gliders - skills that surely helped land an Airbus A320 with both engines on fire in a controlled descent on a nearly frozen river rather than in the middle of a neighborhood of one of the world's most densely populated cities.

Instinct didn't take over for Sullenberger as he steered his jet toward those icy Hudson waters, practice kicked in - the practice of integrity. This is a man who decided earlier in life that safety and human lives were important enough to him that he would dedicate himself to preserving those ends. He trained, he studied, he learned day after day, year after year with those ends in mind. What once began as a pilot's tenuous first flight, over the course of 40 years of practice became unconscious competence - the right attitudes, habits, decisions, actions and demeanor to save lives in a crisis.

Reflections to inspire personal growth in Integrity (with your learning partner):

How would your life be different if you were to practice integrity with greater intent and consistency? What can you do daily to increase your integrity? What is your personal code of ethics; what must you change to demonstrate them more fully? Find an accountability partner or hire a coach to help you practice integrity and take these actions:

• Integrity is the glue that binds your other virtues. What are your other core values? Why these?
• How do these values, together, define who you are, how you think and act, and how you are viewed by others?
• What words and behaviors do other people observe of you daily that demonstrate your values?
• What purpose would you have your life lead toward that you are willing to practice day after day, year after year, to be prepared for the chance event that may provide the ultimate test of your Integrity?
• What specific attitudes, habits and behaviors must you practice consistently to become the person of Integrity you aspire to be?
• Describe an experience or event when you were at your personal best and demonstrated Integrity.
• Describe a current situation in your life that, in your heart, you could apply the same level of Integrity as you did in your example above.
• Make plans to touch base with your learning partner in the next month about how you each are practicing Integrity. Hold each other accountable.

There are no natural leaders. Leaders have developed attitudes, habits, skills and goals that attract others. Leadership is when others follow you because of who you are and where you are going. Discover how you can be the leader you really want to be. Call or email me for a free initial coaching session or visit http://www.pdncoach.com. I coach individuals, teams and organizations to achieve the measurable results they really want.
Copyright 2009 – Mark A. Sturgell. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: visit my Expert Author page at Ezine Articles.