Rituals of top leaders

Alfred Darmanin, SJ

A leader’s main role is to motivate, inspire, and energise people towards a common shared vision.

Recently I came across a book entitled Leadership Wisdom: The Eight Rituals of the Best Leaders by Robin Sharma, who also wrote the international bestseller The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. In it, Sharma proposes the following eight rituals which I found to be both insightful and practical for today’s leaders:

1. Compelling future focus. A leader’s main role is to motivate, inspire, and energise people towards a common shared vision. More than merely managing things, leadership is about developing people. When leaders present a meaningful, clear vision for their organisation’s future, their followers start feeling good about what they do and as a result, about themselves.

Encouraging people to internalise and own the vision statement will generate greater loyalty, trust and commitment. This positive attitude is achieved through empowerment of people.

Great leaders manage the present while inventing the future. They have to learn how to focus on the summit while clearing the path. “The best way to succeed in the future is to create it,” Helen Keller once said.

2. Manage by mind, lead by heart. Or as someone else put it, “Manage by the left brain, lead by the right brain”. A good leader shows interest, care and concern for people and tries to establish interpersonal relations with each member by listening to them genuinely, understanding them and showing them empathy. People need to feel accepted, appreciated and cared for personally.

This is also referred to as the ritual of human relations and communication competency. Leaders make use of their own people skills and talents to reach the hearts of their followers through intuition more than through rational approaches.

3. Teambuilding. Good leaders reward employees who help build group teamwork. They are re­warded for what they do and recognised for who they are. The way a leader treats employees will determine the way they treat customers.

4. Adaptability and change management. In today’s information-driven world, adaptability is one of the most essential leadership skills. Sharma says that to change the results you are getting, you must change things you are doing.

A good leader inspires employees to embrace new ideas and share information. They consider employees’ training and development as an investment, not an expense, a necessity not a luxury. If training is expensive, non-training is even more expensive.

5. Personal effectiveness. This involves focusing on what is worthy. Sharma suggests that the secret of having more time to concentrate on the necessary things is to have the courage to neglect those that are unnecessary. The real secret of personal effectiveness is concentration of purpose.

The famous management guru Peter Drucker once wrote “there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”, and in the words of Confucius, “the man who chases two rabbits catches neither”.

So the real issue is not whether you are busy but what you are busy with. The test of good time-leadership is actually doing what you planned to do, when you planned to do it.

6. Self-leadership. This is about developing the intra-personal skill of mastering yourself, namely, the way you make choices, take decisions, deal with your personal problems, managing stress, and leading a healthy lifestyle.

True leadership starts from within the person, it’s an inside job. All success in business begins in working on oneself. Any attempt at improving an organisation must begin with self-improvement. Leadership in the world begins with leadership of one’s life. Leaders invest in self-care. For example, they reserve time for daily physical exercise.

It is worth spending time and energy to recharge your batteries by using appropriate tools. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “if I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe”.

7. Creativity and innovation. This ritual translates into “See what all see, think what none think”. It consists in developing the skill of discovering new solutions to old problems and in seeking better ways of doing what you do. That is, seeing things not only as they are but as they can become.

Good leaders encourage their followers to be creative and innovative, whether at home, school or work.

To be creative and innovative means to see light where others see only darkness, to feel hopeful where others experience despair, to find opportunities where others feel threats.

8. Contribution and significance. This consists in linking leadership to legacy. In so doing leaders fulfil their calling to liberate the fullness of their personal gifts for a worthy cause. In essence, it’s leaving a legacy.

As Leo Rosten said, “The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you have lived at all.” The purpose of life is a life of purpose. To quote a yogi, “what makes greatness is beginning something that does not end with you.” And “to create a successful present while building a brilliant future.”

Fr Darmanin is a clinical psychologist and author of Developing Leadership Skills.

Life Coaching Skills To Achieve A Balanced Life

Life Coaching Skills To Achieve A Balanced Life

By Jean Sarauer-Universal Life Secrets REVIEW

Life coaching programs provide clients with the necessary skills and tools to create a balanced life. These skills can be developed and honed even without a life coach.

Many people enter life coaching programs desiring greater life balance. Clients often express a yearning to pursue personal goals or enjoy more family time but feel stymied because of work demands and other responsibilities. Life coaches work with these clients to assess their current life balance status, help them set goals, and motivate them to take action. While there are many benefits to being part of a life coaching program, these exercises can be practiced without the services of a life coach.

Two Life Coaching Tools to Assess Life Balance

Life coaches use many methods to gauge life balance status. Two common tools are the life balance wheel and the time tracking diary. The life balance wheel is a circle divided into eight wedges representing common life areas such as career, relationships,finances, hobbies, etc. Consideration is given to how much attention is devoted to each life area. The spokes of the wheel are numbered from 0-10, with 0 being at the center of the wheel and 10 placed at the outer edge. Dots are placed on the appropriate numbers, with 0 representing no attention and 10 representing a great deal of attention. When all areas have been assessed, the dots are connected to provide an image reflective of the current life balance status.

The time tracking diary is a tracking system where all activities are recorded over a specified number of days. The amount of time spent in each activity is recorded, and at the end of the predetermined time period the total time spent in each activity is tallied. This provides a clear picture of how time is spent. Many people are surprised to see how much time is spent engaged in time wasters such as internet surfing or watching television.

Visualize a Balanced Life

To visualize balance in life, relax and imagine an ideally balanced day. Feel the sense of ease and deep satisfaction. Picture the ideal work and home environments, a stress-free commute, and fulfilling leisure activities. Feel the emotions, and experience the sensory images. When the image is clear and feels real, go through the exercise again, this time writing down all the details and feelings. Be as specific as possible.

Set Life Balance Goals

To set goals that will help improve life balance, begin by reading through the balanced day exercise and compare it to the time tracking diary and life balance wheel used for the initial assessment. What needs to change to live that ideal day? Make a list of things that are not in alignment with the vision, such as chaotic mornings before work or evenings spent in volunteer activities. Don’t worry about how to make the changes yet, just write down everything that comes up.

When the list feels complete, choose 2-3 items from the list and use these as a focus. Select something that is achievable in a relatively short time to build momentum. Be clear and specific, writing each goal as if it were already accomplished, such as, “I play guitar for an hour every evening after work.”

Create an Action Plan for a Balanced Life

Life coaches recommend breaking goals down into specific, actionable measures. Think about the necessary steps to make the goal a reality. Using the example of playing guitar for an hour each evening, one possible action step might be cooking in large quantities on the weekend so meals can be microwaved during the week.

Depending on personal circumstances, other action steps to find an hour to play guitar after work might include cutting back on television viewing or hiring help for cleaning and yard work. Perform the action steps, and when a goal has been met, practice the new routine for a few weeks until it is a firmly established habit. Choose new goals at a comfortable pace.

Life Coaching Skills to Maintain Life Balance

When a client participates in a life coaching program, they learn that maintaining a balanced life is an ongoing process. Skills are introduced to help clients stay on track.

Some of the more helpful tools for maintaining life balance include living mindfully, journaling, and reassessing life balance with the life balance wheel or time tracking diary every few months. Libraries and the internet are packed with resources for those who need help with time management, organization, and other topics helpful in achieving and maintaining a more balanced life.

While a little imbalance in life is inevitable, it is possible to live with greater ease and less stress by practicing life coaching skills. By taking the time to assess life balance, visualizing a balanced life, creating an action plan to achieve life balance goals, and using the right tools, even those without a personal life coach can make confident strides towards a more balanced life.

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Organisational theatre

Pauline Attard

Typical problem situations dramatised in organisational theatre plays are sexual harassment, gender issues, conflict management, communication barriers between middle and lower management, and discrimination.

Nowadays, organisations recognise the important role training plays in contributing to their effectiveness.

For training to be effective, it must not concentrate solely on content but must take into account the various ways different people learn, and adapt methods to facilitate their learning.

One aspect of effective adult training is active learning. Facilitators need to do away with the old image of talk, chalk, and teacher-centred methods.

Those being trained have to be active in the learning process in order to break the ‘ironclad bonds of conformity’ described in The Carl Rogers Reader (1993). Researchers in adult learning emphasise the need for participation in order for learning to take place.

Therefore, participative training methods are a very important aspect of the adult training repertoire. Various such methods can be used for effective learning. One such medium is the use of drama.

Drama-based training is both accessible and experiential. It facilitates the learning experience through which the individual acquires the necessary abilities to perform better.

This medium is becoming an important way of training employees. Theatre techniques are increasingly being used to help workers understand the various issues that arise in their organisation and to enable them to adapt to change.

The techniques and the imaginative potency of theatre have been applied over the ages for educational purposes.

Organisations in many countries have recently started to use the medium of theatre. When doing organisational theatre, the audience, such as members of a department, experiences the performance. In doing so, the people do not merely see actors and a good or bad play; they see observations others have made in their organisation, namely the author, director, stage designer and the actors.

Through these plays, members of the audience watch their daily work routines, conventions and conflicts between departments performed on stage from the point of view of the artists who draw from their (professional) observations and their construction of the observed reality.

These observations, communicated on stage, confront the members of the audience with a new reality, which differs from their usual construction of reality. It enables the audience to view different and simultaneous realities and thus it initiates a process of reflection: Why do we do what we do the way we do it?

Organisational theatre thereby initiates a closer examination of the habituat patterns of behaviour, established perceptual constructions or prejudicial views.

One medium used in organisational theatre is Forum Theatre, which was developed by Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre director.

In Forum Theatre, the problem or issue is encapsulated in a written script, which allows participants to explore the characters, personalities and issues which underline their organisation’s problems. These are then acted out by the group to an audience (other colleagues) who attempt to make interventions to alter the course of the dramatic action by proposing solutions using the Forum Theatre technique.

Predictions are made in the written script as to when and what these interventions could be. These are then matched to the interventions actually made, and through reflection the audience has the opportunity – in a safe, creative environment – to analyse their predicted choice of actions/reactions as opposed to those that actually took place in the ‘re-enactment’.

This provides the people involved with an opportunity to learn about their behaviour and attitudes in action, as well as those of others, when dealing with real organisational issues. Typical problem situations dramatised in organisational theatre plays are: sexual harassment, gender issues, conflict management, communication barriers between middle and lower management, and discrimination.

This method of learning is effective mainly because the presentations are realistic, and therefore participants can identify with the situations that are presented.

The discussions that follow after the presentations help the participants analyse and challenge the issues and implications raised during the presentation and in the discussions that follow.

Learning takes place because participants can follow through and maintain their engagement during the presentation.

They can reflect and analyse the issues presented because they are detached from the event and therefore, they can take an objective view of what is being presented.

The Malta Drama Centre will introduce a new unit entitled ‘Organisational Theatre’ in its curriculum as from October. The first course in this series will be on ‘Sexual harassment’.

The course will be 30 hours long and sessions will be held every Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information and bookings call the centre on Tel: 2122 0665 or e-mail: alta.drama.centre@gov.mt

Life Coaching for Skeptics: 18 Areas of Life (But No Parachutes or Color Therapy)

Briana Rognlin

Deputy Editor, Blisstree.com

Posted: September 8, 2010 12:21 PM

I once bought the book What Color Is Your Parachute at a Relay shop in San Francisco International airport. I was returning from a business trip, feeling unsatisfied with life and unsure of what would make me happier. I slid the book, along with another self-improvement title and an issue of O Magazine over the counter, somewhat embarrassed, and the man at the register rhapsodized: "This is such a great book. It's really amazing." I nearly asked for my money back.

The book didn't, after all, teach me what color my parachute was (and I'm still wondering what color it has to be for an airport job to be your calling). So while I'm not categorically against self-improvement tools - I bought the book in the first place, didn't I? - I was dubious when my editor asked me to try life coaching for Blisstree. I imagined cheesy meetings with a pudgy, feel-good bald man in his "therapeutic blue" office. I didn't imagine Laurie Gerber telling me stop making excuses and start figuring out a better plan for my life.

Laurie is my life coach. I've never met her; we only talk over the phone, and that's the way she likes to keep it with her clients. She's the President of Handel Group Life Coaching, and though we haven't met, I'd put my life savings on the fact that she's not pudgy, bald or into therapeutic wall paint. She's all about efficiency (hence the phone calls - who has time for commuting and waiting around in an office?) and accountability (I call her. I also have to send her my homework by 6 p.m. the day before our appointment, or else.). She's also all about getting people to match their real life to their dream life. (That's the hard part.)

Handel Group Life Coaching methods aren't for lazy people or anyone with an easily-bruised ego: My first homework assignment took me over 5 hours, and asked me to divulge details about my weight, sex life, family, and even my financial portfolio. For someone I've never met in-person, Laurie digs deep into the cavities of my worst habits and traits, and knows things about me that, come to think of it, no one else knows. She knows exactly what I currently weigh; what I want to weigh; how much money I spent on lunch last week - and that I blew $50 on an impulse mani-pedi two Fridays ago. Oh, she also knows how much time I spent with my boyfriend, what time I woke up yesterday, and she even knows how many times I hit the gym and the, uh, bedroom. (Seriously, she does.)

If you think this all sounds creepy and overbearing, well, sometimes I feel the same way. But the thing is, it's worth it.

When I embarked on my Handel Group Life Coaching adventure, I started with a deceptively simple homework assignment, called the 18 Areas of Life. It sounds easy enough: On a scale of 1 to 10, you describe a perfect 10 - your dream - in each area. Then you fess up to the reality for each area, and explain what's keeping you from getting to a perfect 10, assuming you're not there already. (Because, let's be honest people, you're in life coaching.) Though the assignment was long (18 areas of life!), it didn't seem that tough... until I actually started doing it.

Articulating my dream life and my real life turned out to be the biggest self-evaluation I'd endeavored in years. I was used to multiple-choice magazine quizzes, for Christ's sake! I spent at least five hours on the assignment, and if I'm honest, I'll admit that I blazed through some of the areas a little too fast. (This didn't slip by Laurie - she asked me to redo parts of the assignment after our first session.) But the exercise alone - even without Laurie's feedback and discussion of my answers - was one of the most enlightening things I'd done in a long time.

Before Handel Group intervened, evaluating my life was something I mostly did when I felt particularly successful or particularly failed. But when I embarked on my life coaching mission, my life was in a pretty "normal" phase - if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But the assignment made me realize that in a lot of areas, my life was about a 7 - described by the Handel Group as "Solid, can't complain, coasting because it's good enough but not a source of pride". Kind of crappy. Who ever said: "On a scale of 1 to 10, my goal is a 7"?

This is where Laurie and life coaching comes in. Our next call is on Tuesday at 8 a.m., and now I need to go do my homework...

Handel Group's 18 Areas of Life Homework Assignment

For each of the following 18 areas of life, use the scale below to describe: a) what a perfect 10 would be for each area; b) what your life is actually like in each area (choose a number and describe in-depth); and c) what the barriers are to making it a perfect 10.

1. Body
2. Career/Business/School Life
3. Money
4. Relationships
5. Romance
6. Sex
7. Community
8. Character Traits
9. Family
10. Time
11. Relationship to Self
12. Bad Habits
13. Home
14. Personal Space
15. Learning
16. Fun & Adventure
17. Spirituality
18. Health

Evaluation Scale:

10 - Perfect. Unsustainable state of affairs. Reserved for individual episodes and fleeting
moments.
9 - Highest sustainable rating for a category.
8 - Highly satisfactory state of affairs. Significant additional focused effort will be needed
to elevate rating to a 9. A source of pride.
7 - Solid, can't complain, coasting because it's good enough but not a source of pride.
6 -Weak, but not painful. Frayed around the edges. Can talk oneself into it being a 7 but
it's not easy. Needs work but doesn't have to be today.
5 - A 6 that's been around a while. Still not intolerable but likely the issue or the
necessary remedial steps are being actively avoided.
4 - Getting to be intolerable...but not yet. Requires a great deal of justification and/or
denial to continue this number at a sustained rate.
3 - Things are bad. Very bad. It is not yet life threatening or a point of no return, but
close.
2 - Things are hopeless. You wonder why you exist. There is much pain. Virtually
unbearable.
1 - Fleeting moments of hell. Unsustainable level of displeasure.

Handel Group Life Coaching believes that individuals achieve lifelong happiness by consciously designing every area of their lives. Handel Group Life Coaches create personal and professional breakthroughs with clients all over the world, including leaders at Vogue, MIT, and AOL. Their unique method, Personal Integrity®, emphasizes inspired, promised actions, accountability and when applied to any area of life, including career, relationship, body, and money creates meaningful results in a very short period of time.

Personal coaching is available by phone and online. Handel Group leads live events throughout the country, including group Life Coaching Tele-Courses, Urban Retreats, and Crash Course weekends. Mention Blisstree for 50% off your first private session or 25% off the fall Coaching Crash Courses.

This post originally appeared on Blisstree.com.

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