Some things simple simply aren’t; at least at first. While chatting recently over cocktails I was reminded (thank god for cocktails) of a past life career that took me overseas on a number of occasions. While there were many experiences during that tenure which helped me grow in a number of different ways (inside and out) it was my very first trip to my very first site that was the source of the memory.

It was (I say ‘was’ for in capitalism one should have capital) a little company with a great big mission that involved kids and their holistic well-being. The vehicle was well ahead of its time; physical activity but there was much more to it than that. It was one of those simple things that isn’t. Until you get it – then it is. Like tying your shoes. We franchised the concept through the US and internationally. My role was to help them ‘get it’. It was consulting in nature and it was awesome.

After nearly a year with the company I knew enough to be helpful (but at the same time not knowledgeable enough and so therefore dangerous). This position is familiar to many and I did what we all do – the best I could. In prepping for the trip, to open the first Thai facility, I asked the company founder about language – what are the challenges? I had trained the owners here in the States for nearly six weeks and knew they, at least, spoke better English than me. The founder’s answer was not to worry – he’d never encountered any issue at all. I accepted his answer gladly and well before I came to find out that he did not know what he was talking about.

After landing and several meetings with senior Thai management, who spoke English well enough, I headed out the door and down the facility’s main hallway to the meeting room where I would do the first day orientation for the folks who would actually be running the children’s programming on a daily basis; college educated PE people. I was prepped and prepared materials in hand imagining my positive imaging message – let’s get psyched we have important work to do! I walked down the hall with Sompit, the Thai owner, and heading into the conference room she says, “Now don’t talk too fast. No one in the room speaks English so I will translate the best I can”.

WTF? (I was WTF before WTF was). Twenty smiling faces newly hired excited at, for some, their first professional job working with kids. Little did they know they were about to learn nothing. I have, like you, been thrown curve balls before and expecting something different you change your stance move the mitt and catch the ball.

What followed in the next four hours was exhausting AND exhilarating. I did slow down – but not my language first – it followed. What I had come to learn is that translation is not a ‘you say this word and I will go find it in my language and then use it’. Translation is culturally contextual in that after I said what I said she washed its meaning and then spoke to the thoughts and ideas behind my words in her native language. I can’t even imagine how that happens – but it does. So my thinking slowed down as I worked to choose words that more clearly expressed the meaning of whatever topic I was on at the moment. I was mindful to check on clarity much more often than I ever had previously. The day was a success and I know that I learned much more than they in very many ways.

We translate too everyday – English to English. It too is culturally contextual but on a more micro basis – the differences are more subtle – a crack versus a chasm. We usually succeed in the effort but not always. We take much for granted like tying our shoes. But it is only easy once we ‘get it’. And that takes a little awareness and even more practice.

That is unless you use loafers in your language.

Jim

jim@thepeopleacademyinc.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece

@jimreece

Toni Reece

As coaches we use our coaching skills to weave in and out of very tricky situations that can arise when working with a team or working one to one. Over the last twenty years of coaching I have dealt with very difficult and aggressive people.  I have used the tools and resources that I have gathered over the years to minimize confrontations and calm people down.  Now, I wasn’t great at it in the early days, but I have gotten better as the years have gone by.   As a coach you have to work very hard at not taking things personally and keep the focus on the client or teams always understanding that it isn’t about you but it is about them. 

We know this as coaches, right?  And we (if we are good) handle ourselves and others with the right amount of empathy and professionalism.  But what happens when you meet people who are not simply stuck in a bad situation or have had their hands tied with unrealistic expectations that cause them to be a bit grumpy? What if they aren’t grumpy but just downright mean?   What is a coach to do?  Do you work with that person, do you excuse yourself as their coach, and do you excuse them from the team?  What is a coach to do?

The dictionary defines the word “mean” as “. . . having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality”.  As coaches we have to define our own value system, our own integrity and what we will accept or not accept when it comes to our values and integrity.  

This past week I met with someone who wanted me to work with him and his team.  In the course of the conversation he asked me what I brought to the table, I told him that I bring the PEOPLE part to the team.   My experience is coaching and working with teams on the systems that support employee performance.  I stated that a team/company might have the best product, best marketing strategy, mission and vision, however, if the PEOPLE systems are not working then the rest will be negatively affected.   His response – “I do not subscribe that PEOPLE are important in a company or a team, I don’t care about the PEOPLE, and I only care about how the company is making money.”   Wow.

I tried to state my case differently explaining again that you might think you have the best processes in place but there are PEOPLE behind most processes and if those PEOPLE are experiencing barriers, such as communication, leadership, conflict, trust, teambuilding and lack of problem solving skills (just as examples) then the balance is off and your systems are in effect NOT that good.  His reply was, “Nope. Again, people are not part of the equation of the business or team success, they come and go and I don’t care if they are successful or not.”  He actually called the leaders who run the companies his agency supports “morons” that do not know how to run a business and that is why they need him and his team.  

WOW!  Remember the definition “. . . having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality” 

As a coach, and a business owner myself, I was appalled by this meanness of this person’s view of the human part of business.    After he threw up all of his ideas (not a bad visual) about work and what is important he did state that he would want to see if we could work something out. Maybe he could find clients that MIGHT be interested in the power of the person as a contributor to corporate success.  The dilemma for me - do I use my coaching skills to facilitate this conversation for further discovery of potential work or move on.  

Was my desire to make a “buck” going to be bigger than my desire to stay true to my values and integrity?  Do I want to be associated with his brand of organizational success? I can only imagine the introductions created by this joker. Or do I just dismiss him as mean realizing it is not about me - but about him. In other words just get over him and move forward?

I packed my stuff, thanked him for his time and that of his team, and simply stated that the meeting was over. If I was coaching him perhaps a different ending but I had no intention of working with anyone who philosophically did not believe in the power of the human being.  He sat there stunned and I walked out with my head held high!

toni@thepeopleacademyinc.com

Summer brings with it certain seasonal joys and tonight I saw my first lightning bug. Not my first ever mind you. Not a Somali and snow sort of ‘see’ but saw it nevertheless; a little yellow dot just across the street on the median near the very little new tree; (Very little - it’s new. New as it replaced the previous older tree crushed when our much older tree collapsed on it. It’s the only thing I have ever known or been associated with that has destroyed municipal property. But then my life isn’t all that interesting).

I remember quite fondly the summer rush of these tiny exotic creatures and how the night would light with them; although it seems I remember it as an August sort of experience. I hope this is not another global warming thing – early lightning bugs - and is more a cognitive aging issue among the species. I couldn’t live with another warming thing chipping away magical childhood moments.

I, we, all of us in the neighborhood would run and catch – release and more of the same; for hours. And then when older but still child-like just looking in wonder at the beauty. It’s a beauty born of nature - “Hey ladies here I am!” I once tried this in college by sticking a light bulb up my ass, winking at the cute ones, while trying to pay for their drinks. I can say for certain that one should really leave this sort of master design to god.  I am not saying it didn’t light up I am just saying . . .

But for the glow; the constant search for its purpose. The glow is not a conscious sort of thing it just is. It is the nature of the beast. It is in the design – the grand design. They’re not unlike us; a need to glow – a need to be ‘seen’ as alive at work; in our most meaningful relationships.

I remember hunting all night collecting in a grass filled jar with life holes punched atop; maybe thirty or forty tiny lights; awesome glow from their collective being. I cannot say for sure that they would have behaved any different knowing they were captive but I chose to believe that they would not have – because that is their nature – that is the way they were built.

I have known people in my life both at work and home that were fireflies. So do you. Groups of them stayed lit even when it may have been a little pre seasonal to do so; people who were of their nature simply because that is what it means to live. If you have a lightning bug at work or home and are forced (out of ignorance or force) to keep her in a jar then for chri’sakes at least put a little grass in there.

We glow because it is our destiny. It is the way we are built. Look at the glow and be amazed even 50 years after your first. It is something to behold and to remember. It is the spirit. It is the essence of life. Remember it with those at work and those at home. Everyone has a light to them.

I am wondering if they have lightning bugs in Iran.

I think they do.

Jim

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece

What in the world is going on? The course of the torture debate has taken us from ignorance, to a glimpse of something, to the truth (we did). In the cry for ‘why’ what was the answer from those who did? They (and by ‘they’ I mean ‘he’) said it was effective . . . WHAT? What the hell sort of answer is that? It is immoral, illegal and threatens everyone we know and love around the world but it is okay because it works? What happened to doing what’s right?

Can you imagine trying to get away with that at work?

Boss: “Why did you hold Miller’s head in the toilet for ten minutes 185 times this morning? You almost killed him!”

                You: “He wouldn’t give me the quarterly numbers.”

I am sure that I could have had better short term success in getting my son to clean his room by punching him the face. But how sick to you have to be to believe that as good methodology? I know I know that scenario DOES play out way to often for too many kids (and women) but it is not the result of practical policy. It is the result of really sick people who cannot distinguish right from wrong. So that obviously is not what we’re talk  . . . Mmmmm.

But here is the rub. It doesn’t work anyway.

So what did work? According to Matthew Alexander, (an interrogator in Iraq who conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000), it was relationship building. Yep. Relationship building was central in the success of gaining information. Lest you think he is some leftist leaning communist, Up With People cast reject or some overweight teambuilding wannabe, you should know that he led the interrogations team that located Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq, and one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation. Success is centered in relationship building. You can read his testimony here (and should). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-alexander/my-written-testimony-to-tb_203269.html.

Imagine that. It was relationship building. Earning the trust of those you need to achieve success. Isn’t that what we’re all about in business coaching? What happens organizationally in abusive employer/employee relationships; or in supervisor to subordinate relationships? And we need not go to the extreme of breaking the law to know the answer. It does not work.

In fact we do not have to go to any extreme at all organizationally; or in any relationship for that matter. The mere absence of trust creates a dysfunctional state. The consequences are deep and go far beyond simply getting the work done.  Trust in relationships; consciously sought. That’s what’s right.

Jim

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece