In my last post, I discuss Asana, the company. Founders, Moskovitz and Rosenstein are contributing to the global shift occurring on the planet right now that espouses we are interconnected, transitioning from me to we.  They are living their belief that they can turn a profit in a way that does the least harm and actually contributes to social good.

They believe groups create larger contributions to the world than individuals. They operate from the premise that all problems are solvable if we work together. “While corporations are excellent vehicles for collecting resources and making money to build better services, they are also excellent vehicles for creating joy and alleviating suffering.”

This sounds like Buddha in business attire.

Rubinstein says, “As a collective, co-creators do great things vs. human resources who extract things…. companies [should be] a means to an end to create joy on earth.”

Finally, they espouse a radical concept and departure from traditional corporate speak: Transparency of being – “let people be who they are…” don’t make them have to switch modes when they come to work.

What if you worked for a company that supported all of who you are? What if our corporate culture shifted from exploitation to working partnership to create life nurturing goods and services versus selling us things we don’t really need or want?

I heard a financial analyst the other day give an overview on his view of the economy. “We have been living beyond our means for 30 years.  We now have to lower our expectations.”

This we know. The real question is, can we come together as a nation, as a world and think differently about how we make money and about how much money we really need? Afterall, whatever you make, you can’t take it with you when you go.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Asana – not just a yoga pose but a company!

Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded Asana to enable teams to accomplish their goals more effectively. They do this by leveraging technology to form a collective memory, a “source of truth” as they describe it. They facilitate self organization so others see the information – and have a more immediate way of acting on it. It’s like a fluid project management system.

Do you suffer from continual partial attention? Their objective is to facilitate optimizing your energy with what is most important at any given time.

These entrepreneurs embody and apply what they know to be true:

• Powering through things and driving yourself is not what makes you most effective.
• Doing sprints, with rests in-between is more effective (as described in Loehr’s and Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement).
• In order to do creative work, it is important as an individual and as a company to understand your energy patterns and work with those in a deliberate way.
• It is possible to be in sync – work in harmony with a higher spiritual mission and be a business and a successful company.

Company practices that support these beliefs:

• They have a company chef to make good, nutritious food, in order to maximize energy levels.
• They align their people with a mindfulness practice – to pay attention to what they are doing and how they are doing it.
• Every Friday they have a TGIF where they share one thing they are excited about and one opportunity to put more attention to.

Food for thought….

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Got Mindfulness?
Join the Quiet Revolution.
Pay Attention.

Start here now. Do your part to save the world – starting with you.

You can’t lead your family or your business to something you don’t possess.

Here is a great talk by Congressman Tim Ryan talking about how mindfulness practice has impacted his life and his work.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Many spiritual teachers espouse: if you can’t live in the moment and are always searching, you will never be happy. This logically makes sense – and I know this experientially.

Tara Brach tells a great Indian myth that generates keen questions to ponder:

What is within you today that makes you happy – or just laugh outloud?

How many moments have you been present and said this is enough?

Is the present moment what you have been looking for?

When have you said this is the center, meaning, preciousness of my life…this is what counts?

Savor it all. Just for today…

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

How would you condense the themes and patterns of your life into a short story? What have you consciously worked on to change about yourself? Where are you at with radical acceptance? I love Portia Nelson’s Autobiography:

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters  By Portia Nelson

Chapter I

I walked down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in I am lost… I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in… it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

Hiring for agelessness is based upon someone’s consciousness, their perspective, their ability to shift from me to we. The individual is focused on how we can create something great together. These are ageless attributes.

You may know someone who, at twenty, is fearful, domineering and stuck in their ways. Or, perhaps you know of a sixty or seventy-something who is as vibrant, vital and eternally curious as your five year old? Passion, wonder, the ability to work collaboratively knows no age bounds.

These are all qualities that are core requisites for working in the 21st century: the age of speed and technology. It’s up to the user how they manage themselves to make the best use of this environment. They either lead themselves to more fragmentation or more wholeness – leveraging their own wisdom and that of the collective wisdom, their teams or families.

Solving our complex problems today requires an integration of different disciplines and a sense of how to creatively bring together seemingly disparate factors or factions. We can’t afford any less of our whole selves showing up to the party. You hire for agelessness first and foremost by paying attention to the individual in front of you, not just what the packaging looks like or what their resume says. It’s a brave new world.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Yesterday I talked about making sure you have accurately assessed yourself – WHY you are putting off action.

Here are some strategies to address the root causes of why this happens:

1. For fear: Identify similar tasks where you have been successful in the past to bolster your confidence. Focus on the present possibility of success and try to stay with that versus jumping ahead to the implications of success. Stay present. Enjoy the ride!

2. For worrying about what others think: ask for support and feedback from your “fans” on what you do well. Remind yourself about what you do well by creating a list of successes, and know that you can only control yourself. Put on mental blinders: It’s not your business what people think of you. Your job is to do the best you can with the matter at hand.

3. For being overwhelmed: work with your boss, coach, peer, spouse or friend to talk out loud to “de-whelm” yourself and make the project or task more manageable: break it down into smaller, step/step tasks; ask them for guidance, coaching, suggestions as to what to do or how to do it; ask for helpful resources (books, articles, websites, training).

4. If you don’t like the task: delegate it, if you can. If not, then find a way to make it fun: play music, dance, doodle, give yourself a reward after key milestones and upon completion.

5. For fear of loss: acknowledge the loss – what you loved about the previous project or team, make plans to (re-) visit if appropriate and/or say good-bye.

These are some brief suggestions to get you started. (I’ve done whole seminars just on procrastination!). The key is to identify one of the above solutions or create your own – and try it. Don’t delay.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

We all have moments – hours, days or weeks – where we are putting something off: a task or a project. It could be making a phone call to someone confronting an issue, starting a project, or doing the last step to finish a project.

Considering what “it” is that gets put off, you first need to give yourself a proper diagnosis – to delve into why you keep putting “it” off – before you can create an action plan around it. Today we’ll talk about the diagnosis and tomorrow we’ll talk about how to address it.

Typically there are two root emotions that allow procrastination to grow. They are fear and loss.

1. Fear falls into two categories: fear of failure or fear of success. We have these fears for a number of reasons. To name a few:

2. We are worried about what others think.

3. We are overwhelmed and not sure how to manage or prioritize the project - we don’t know WHAT to do or where to begin; we don’t know HOW to do something; we don’t believe we can do it or have something of value to offer; if we succeed more will be expected of us in the future. We are thinking of all of this at once!

4. We plain just don’t like the task.

5. You might think “loss” is an odd thing to have on this list. But sometimes you could be putting off finishing a project because you love it so much and don’t want it to end. All endings are beginnings and all beginnings are the end of something that came before. You might not want to start a project as it signifies leaving another project team behind or going to a different office building. By putting it off, you don’t have to deal with the loss of that project or group.

If you are frustrated with yourself and want to get yourself to action, ask yourself is your procrastination due to one of these reasons? When you answer yes, then you can start brainstorming how to address it. If it is none of the above, then ask yourself: Am I really being honest? Why won’t I do this task? Keep asking why until you get to the core emotion or reason. If it’s not one of the above, what else is it?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

I’m hard pressed to find a difference. Both are focused on what is good and positive and building on this for positive results.

“Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive…This field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.”

This is a departure from the traditional field of psychology and traditional therapy which emphasizes mental illness or what is wrong with us.

The International Coaches Federation (ICF) “defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” This definition was buried deep in their website. This organization is a valiant effort to set up some kind of standards so unschooled or inexperienced people can’t hang out their shingle and declare themselves a coach.

Both disciplines focus on building on what works, what our strengths are. Neither is focused on what is broken.

ICF defines the distinction between therapy and coaching as:

“Coaching can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First, coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth and development based on individual-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused.”

Therapy can say all this, especially positive psychology-based.

“Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways.”

This is a description of some modalities of therapy. At my last count there are over 250 therapeutic modalities, with positive psychology being one of them.

“Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follow through.”

Both therapy and coaching should focus on insight, behavior change, actionable strategies and outcomes with positive emotional states if they are doing their jobs effectively. How can you heal someone without enhancing positive emotions? How can someone achieve their goals if they are negative?

In terms of coaching, I don’t know how you can help someone have and be more of what they want in their life or work without dealing with their feelings.

In the marketplace of free enterprise – does it matter what someone calls themselves as long as the consumer goes in with their eyes open and is clear on what they are getting and feels that their Coach or Therapist has given them a service of value – has joined with them in their process to help them move their life forward in ways where they are achieving their goals and thriving?

Regardless of your profession – all of life and work is a healing process to help us be more of who we can be – more whole – fulfill our potential. We are all fragmented in some way or not as “good” as we can be. Each professional practitioner has pieces or elements that help us get more of what we want in work and life. They have similar training and toolkits around deep listening, client relationship building. They may have different theoretical models and frameworks, which do factor in, in terms of orientation and approach to the work.

The disciplines use some different language that appeals to different audiences. Does it matter if they are essentially talking about the same thing? Targeted language is important. Could it be that it comes down to what label someone is comfortable with?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

The field of coaching as a structured profession is new and loosely defined. I’m an experienced business and leadership coach. I am also a trained therapist.

I left the field of therapy at 27 to go into business. At that time, one of my clients who had schizophrenia said to me, “Well you are an okay therapist but you are too young. Go out in the world and get some life experience and then you’ll be a good therapist.” When I told my other client I was leaving, she said, “I hope you drop dead.” And then hung up. So goes the life of a therapist! Lol.

Having now worked in business for over 20 years, I found my clients words to ring true – not dropping dead!  I can attest to the richness of my work and life experience making me a better coach, counselor, and consultant.

The clinical training I received has been invaluable in my coaching and facilitation work in terms of:

1. Understanding what is required for significant, sustainable behavior change.

2. Understanding group dynamics and how to best leverage them to facilitate insight and learning.

3. Having an appreciation for how many people are “in the room” when talking with a client.

4. Understanding how to keep boundaries between “my stuff” and my client’s “stuff” in service of what is really helpful for the goals of our engagement and their development.

I have been in many industry discussions focused on differentiating the distinction between therapy and coaching – and have yet to find a clear definition that is accurate and concrete. I heard it said, “While coaching holds that the client is whole, resourceful, capable and creative, therapy does not.” Many therapists would take exception.

When you are working with “the worried well”, the lines are gray. The overlap is both coaches and therapists work in the realm of emotions. Today our problems are more complex so require both head and heart, thoughts and feelings.

While many therapists lead with emotions, they may also work on left brain strategies to heal their clients. With matters of the heart, you can’t always hold the results to a timeline and the cathartic process can be charged and messy. Coaching work is time bound, to monitor and measure results. While coaches may lead with left brain approaches, they need to address emotions in order to get at the roots of sustainable change. All true change takes place in the context of safety and trusted relationships.

To me, the bottom line for coaching is: have the coach and coachee created an alliance of the client’s design that will help him or her achieve their goals? Does the coach have a diverse toolkit that can help his/her client see and feel the possible and make real, measurable progress against it?

Is the coach serving as a safe sounding board. co-strategist and giving their client timely, candid feedback? This is the heart of coaching. Nothing more, nothing less.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com