Archive for the ‘Consulting’ Category
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
I was doing some research about the environment. My mind went to Henry David Thoreau and how he was a “gadfly” to keep people connected to nature. He was a searcher for the truth and knew that our inner nature is connected with outer nature.
His life, his writing, was about seeking the deeper meaning, of everything. We have become such a “sound bite” nation any idea that takes more than five words to express is ignored.
Maybe we do need to stop, during these summer months and be quiet in nature’s bounty. Sit with the tress and flowers, sit with the sand and water, sit with the stars at night, and just sit. It was in this quiet that Thoreau wrote “Walden“.
What does this have to do with work you are wondering; nothing and everything?
We are living in such a polluted world and it is not just the physical chemicals, the oil, and the trash that is bearing down on us. We are also burdened with workplace conflict that seems to get worse and worse all the time.
With my coaching clients I am hearing more and more disaffection that co-workers have with each other. With all the team building programs, all the pizza parties, all the community days set aside, there is still an edge of tension in most work environments.
This emotional pollution is causing untold stress and it tumbles from home to work to little league. What can be done?
The idea of being an office environmentalist came to me as I was researching information about Thoreau. He died at the young age of 44 and left a legacy for others, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King to look at what I am calling emotional pollution and take a stand.
We are spending way too much time yelling at company officers who have done poor jobs, not just BP, check out the poor quality cement work of Halliburton in the Gulf as another example.
It’s not about how bad “they” are. What about our personal responsibilities for maintaining our beautiful planet, for being kind and civil to each other at work, in our communities?
This Thoreau quote stayed with me, I offer it to you “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
Take some quiet time this summer and think about how you can help get to the root.
Tags: Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Environment, Gadfly, Henry David Thoreau, Nature, Reflections, Silence, Sylvia Lafair, Truthteller, Workplace Conflict
Posted in Accountability, Boss, Business, Character, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Consulting, Decision Making, Executive Teams, Honor, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Media, Nature, PatternAware, Patterns, Reflections, Relationships, The Country Place, Transformation, Workplace Relationships, leadership development, motivation | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
A friend of mine, amazing man, just sold his business for a lot of money, I mean a lot of money. Everyone is happy for him. He smiles when he talks about his pot of gold, his fabulous career, yet the smiles seem somehow vacant, somehow sad.
He invited me for late morning coffee. We sat at a cornet table, far from the maddening crowd in this busy Starbucks and I heard the story under the plastic smile.
He has the money now, and he has what he never had before, the time; all that is good. However, he told me he has been haunted by memories of years gone by and he can’t get these memories out of his mind.
Let me give you the picture. This tall, handsome man is in his early 60’s. He has been healthy and vibrant. Married, divorced, remarried; two grown children, a son and a daughter and two step sons. He has a beautiful wife, beautiful city home and a beautiful vacation home in a beautiful beach community. Got the picture?
Sounds like the model of American success? On one level it is. On another it raises a major question: what do we give up to get?
That is his struggle today. He is haunted by thoughts of how much he missed watching his kids grow up, how driven he was for success. How sad he is about the times that the office became his sanctuary and everything else was on the back burner.
Not sure what he wants to do with the remaining years. His parents and grandparents lived to their late eighties so unless hit by a truck he has many good years ahead. Yet, no preparation for what to do; there is only so much golf you can play.
He asked me to officially coach him, help him find some meaning, some new kind of quality. Most of my coaching time is spent with folks requesting leadership development and executive education. This is a new and important place for me to focus; with the boomer group searching for meaning.
We will be starting a program soon that is the result of my coaching with this man; it has been named “Total Life Connections“. It is based on our highly successful “Total Leadership Connections “program. It addresses the big question of how to give back, how to make a difference, what really matters when pinnacles of success have been reached and we stand there with vacant smiles asking “Now what?”
This program will answer that quality of life question. Call or email for more details.
Tags: Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Consulting, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, programs, Transformation, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Consulting, Education, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Patterns, Reflections, Total Leaders, Workplace Relationships, leadership development | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
We have just entered a new era of health care and it gives all of us an opportunity to participate in the discussion of what constitutes health and, let me add, well being.
I believe leadership development must include ways for all employees to “practice safe stress”. What does that really mean? First, here is what we know: an overdose of stress, especially when it is continuous, plays havoc with our immune systems. We then become susceptible to all kinds of chronic illnesses, both physical and emotional.
Before CEO, Inc. morphed into a leadership enhancement, team building, and conflict resolution company, it was, for ten plus years a personal development center. Much of the focus was, and continues to be, on helping individuals, teams, and business executives find the way OUT of old, outdated ways of relating and communicating.
What we discovered in our journey to health and well being was that when we repeat old patterns learned from our original organization, the family, in present time relationships, stress is activated and can truly make us sick.
So, this is an exciting time to go beyond the debate about insurance companies, best or worst hospitals, good or bad physician bedside manner, and focus on how to keep health premiums down by staying healthy.
There are tons of books about what to eat, the benefits of exercise, how meditation does make a difference, why it is important to spend time in nature. Our part of the puzzle is the way OUT of what no longer can serve you in relationships.
Practicing safe stress means being aware of what pushes your buttons and what to do about it. The OUT technique points the way to help you OBSERVE your behavior. Right away that will begin the process of diminishing stress. Then we help you UNDERSTAND where the patterns began for deeper and more long lasting change. Finally, you have the opportunity to TRANSFORM the behaviors that no longer serve you to their healthy and positive opposite.
I do believe if we all practiced safe stress our health care system would be used properly and effectively for emergency medicine and for those mysterious diseases that are still looking for a cure.
You can find out more about safe stress by taking the pattern aware quiz at www.sylvialafair.com. And as an added benefit you can contact us for help in going over the quiz with you.
Here is to a new era of health care for all of our citizens, and for all of us feeling the fire of being in optimum shape.
Tags: Conflict Resolution, Leadership, leadership development, Safe Stress, Stress, Team Building
Posted in Conflict, Consulting, Employee burnout, Health, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Management, Patterns, Stress, leadership development | No Comments »
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
This is a time for women to pat themselves on the back for all the successes that have come in the last 60 years. The role of women has changed dramatically, and it has been mostly a quiet revolution.
But there have been some loud bumps and bleeps along the way, like the angry wife who took action to cut off her husband’s private parts, rather than just wish she could. With the rash of cheaters now making the headlines that may be something to rethink instead of all the shame-faced public apologies. Scratch that, it was just a wandering thought!
Since, within the next several months women will become the majority of the workforce, and we know there is power in numbers, it is an important time to think about what we, both female and male, want to have as change initiative, moving forward.
I would like to underline the importance of a partnership model. Women and men need to talk in a new and more effective way. It is about how we connect and relate around the things that matter most – our relationships and how to be stewards for the future generations.
Not enough air time has been given to these priorities, and as a society I believe we are suffering and self- medicating through substances, sex, and shopping.
There is a new feminism (what about a new ‘malism’) that takes into account the differences in the way men and women are wired. We need to find a middle way that takes into account how male and female brains process information. Not good or bad, just DIFFERENT.
Even more importantly, we need to take into account the legacy we hand to the next generation. So far, we, and that means all of us, have not gotten high marks here. What are we teaching our kids about what it means to be a woman, a man, a business person, a citizen, a human being?
The workplace is the place where change can happen and happen quickly. It is the place that has changed the most in the past century. It is the place that women and men can begin a true dialogue and real partnership can occur.
Tags: Celebrity cheaters, Change initiative, Cheaters, Female vs Male thinking, Feminism, Future generations, Models, Partnership model, Pulbic apologies, Relationships, Self-medicating, Substance abuse, Women vs Men, Women's revolution, Women's success
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Business, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Education, Ethics, Executive Teams, History, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Management, Marital coaching, Media, Money, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, The media, Transformation, Trust, Uncategorized, Women in the workplace, Workplace Relationships, leadership development | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
We are living in an era of polarities. Our government is a house divided, not just by being Republicans and Democrats, but by taking extreme views on just about everything and then, as we all see, nothing happens. We are polarized, and we are stuck.
Same thing happens in the workplace when there is too much emphasis on only thinking about the positive. In an organization that leaves no room for dissent, we get a variation of the movie “Pleasantville” (if you haven’t seen it, it is worth the time).
There are ideas that if you focus only on the positive then, like magic, the genie will appear and you will get what you want. That is the premise of the book “The Secret” that has made millions for the authors and has done little for readers.
Recently I heard someone say “If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your definite plans”. There is a mystery to our lives, and part of joining into the essence of that mystery is to be real, and to accept the ebb and flow of life in its entirety.
What do I mean by being real? That means accepting the bitter with the better, and telling ourselves and others the truth about what we see, think and feel.
The new way of doing things is to find a balance between looking at the good in our lives, and being appreciative, as well as letting our angry, sad, or disappointed emotions show.
After the super-bowl, the coach, Jim Caldwell showed what real is in an appropriate way. He acknowledged that he and the team were upset, and yes, they would sulk for awhile. Then they would bounce back and use the disappointment of losing this big game to their advantage for next year.
I guarantee that the best way to handle being upset is to…well, be upset. You really don’t move on until you get the hurt and sadness out. If it sits in you, it leads to long term patterns of avoidance and denial, two of the most common and destructive patterns that can destroy a team or a company.
You can see the results of too much of phony happiness and what to do about it in “Don’t Bring It to Work”. Learn to monitor your own behavior so you don’t get caught in the trap of playing “let’s pretend”.
Tags: Anger in the workplace, Balance, Humor in the workplace, Jim Caldwell, Life's plans, Polarities, Super Bowl Coach
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Boss, Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Education, Employers, Executive Teams, Fear, Health, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Management, Media, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Psychology, Reflections, Transformation, Trust, leadership development | No Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Leadership and creativity are linked at a core level. Great leaders are also artists in many areas. The following amazing photographs show us how, if we trust each other and find that core creative place, we can make the ordinary extraordinary!
In Japan, rice is essential to life, both for food and as a way of life. Rice planting season has made this very small island culture into one where there is cooperation and collaboration. You can only plant and harvest rice in certain seasons, and it takes the effort of many to make this happen. Once the basics of planting are no longer an issue, look at the creativity that can come with doing the same thing year after year and making it new and unique.
As I looked at these photographs I wondered who came up with the ideas. Then I thought……………who cares? It is a team effort, and the results speak for themselves. Having been to Japan many times, I was always fascinated by the lack of “me, me, me” ego so often seen in the West. Collaboration is at the heart of the hard work that went into these works of art. Enjoy.
Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted.
Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different color rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.
A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants. The colors are created by using different varieties. This photo was taken in Inakadate, Japan.
Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies. This was created by precision planting and months of planning by villagers and farmers located in Inkadate, Japan.
Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are featured on the television series Tenchijin, appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan.
This year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan, including designs of deer dancers. Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan, such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers
The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the time between planting and harvesting in September.
The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square meters of paddy fields.
From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.
Closer to the image, the careful placement of the thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.
Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew from meetings of the village committees. The different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.
In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.
In 2005, agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art.
A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Collaboration, Diversity, Economy, Family-Based Patterns, Japanese art, Leadership, leadership programs, Natural art, Resilience, Rice, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Collaboration, Communication, Consulting, Diversity, Economy, Education, Employers, Ethics, Executive Teams, Honor, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, Super Achiever, Team Building, Transformation, Trust | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Recently Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of General Electric Co’s NBC Universal Entertainment, told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose: “It’s the sign of a leader to step up and say you know when something’s not working, and have the guts to reverse it”.
By the end of the interview, it was questionable whether Zucker, like Conan O’Brien, would be fired. That is the way we work. Take risks, win and get the equivalent of an Oscar. Lose, and get the boot!
Is there a better way? Can there be a middle ground where what is learned when risk- taking fails gets dissected, and gives those in the loop a chance to reform their thoughts and actions in a more positive way?
What is so often the case is that the “loser” is so busy defending what has happened and is feeling the heatwaves of being under constant attack, there is no time to learn from what has been going on.
As a culture, we are so addicted to winning, and accept that as the only way. We lose, yes – lose both sight of the value of the down side of risk taking, as well as the human cost of defending, explaining and justifying behavior.
Jeff Zucker may be in a stagnant time in his career. He may be used up in his CEO role. On the other hand, he may well be in a fertile time of learning from the mess and come up with some real and juicy ideas that will get NBC out of the doldrums. If he is fired, he will lose and so will whoever replaces him. There is always backlash where the pendulum often swings to the opposite side. Thus, conservative, risk adverse individuals often follow the risk takers and progress is paralyzed.
So, NBC, a paraphrase from the song “Give peace a chance”, think about it and “Give Jeff a chance”.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Business, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Economy, Education, Emotions, Ethics, Executive Teams, Family-Based Patterns, Leadership, Management, Media, Money, pattern aware, Politics, Power, Stress, Transformation, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Boss, Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Economy, Education, Employers, Ethics, Executive Teams, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Management, Media, Money, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Super Achiever, Team Building, The media, leadership development | No Comments »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
I saw an article in The Citizen-Times.com, Ashville North Carolina that struck a cord with me. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, in promoting his book, referred to Native Americans as “injuns”.
How many times have racial slurs slipped into a talk and ignored? When do we all stop and say “No more!”? Why is there still a propensity to put down groups of people, to make them seem less than?
In my work with cultural sensitivity and diversity, I teach that it comes from a deep, dark place in individuals and in groups. It is a safety device attempting to ward off the threat of “others”. “If they are not like me, they must be a danger to me.”
This kind of thinking lives in the older parts of the social brain and has caused wars and constant disaffection among people.
“Injun”, is no different than “kike”, “spic”, “dago”, “nigger”, or “gook” - it is intended to target a person or group of people, and make them seem unimportant, insignificant. It is a method of making those who use these terms to feel powerful and in control, and makes those who once felt like victims become victimizers. This is sadly, a common psychological mechanism that needs much more exploration, not just in personal matters, of physical or sexual abuse, but also in cultural abuse.
In her article, B. Lynne Harlan, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, raises the vital question: “When are we going to hold our leaders to a higher standard”?
This is a key discussion point for all programs: Be they MBA’s, leadership development, executive education, conflict resolution, team building, corporate governance, and the like.
It is time for all of us to look at the crusted, corroded arrogance and dissention that lives in our personal psyches and begin to clean up the inner pollution that causes as much damage as the toxins caused by machines in our external environment.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Book, Coaching, Communication, Conflict, Diversity, Economy, Education, Emotions, Ethics, Executive Teams, Family-Based Patterns, Health, History, Leaders, Leadership, Media, neuropsychology, Neuroscience, Patterns, Power, Relationships, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Coaching, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Education, Ethics, Health, History, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Media, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, The media, leadership development | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
If you are an executive leader, human resource professional, management consultant, or emerging high potential manager, it is vital for you to understand what goes on inside the heads and hearts of employees to help them become the best they can be. That is your golden globe or Oscar – to help people into excellence.
The more you know how your words and actions impact others, the better you can be at directing a situation to a positive end point. Take for example, the almost universal craving for chocolate. Godiva has made a fortune from knowing how to package this desire into beautifully crafted candy. You can take the newest knowledge from neuroscience and do the same.
Did you ever wonder if we have a “chocolate gene” hidden somewhere in our biology? Actually the answer is in the limbic system of the brain. One study by Matthew Lieberman and Golnaz Tabibnia indicated that people were more positive when a dollar was split fairly giving each individual 50 cents than when they received $8 and another person received $17 out of a $25 bounty. Interesting, more money was not the issue, it was one of fairness. Other studies have indicated that the same feeling of satisfaction that we get from chocolate occurs when we are treated fairly.
How does that affect you at work? If you are the CEO of a company and you treat your senior team fairly, there will be a satisfaction factor beyond bonuses and appreciation awards. If you are a project manager and you are really careful not to “play favorites”, you will find there is more cooperation and also more creative problem solving.
Many of the HR issues that cause feverish sweats in companies are due to the fairness factor. People are often willing to fight ‘to the death’ when they feel they have been treated unfairly. Most class-action suits are fairness based. They cost huge amounts of goodwill, along with the money.
Think about how your actions impact the social brain and the limbic system where threat and hostility are activated. Then stop and decide how you can handle a situation in a more even handed way. It’s like giving chocolate to a baby!
Tags: Behavioral Patterns, Communication, Conflict, Cooperation and teamwork, Diversity, Economy, Education, Emotions, Employee appreciation, Employee recognition, Ethics, Executive Teams, Fair treatment, Leadership, Matthew Lieberman and Golnaz Tabibnia, Psychology, Team Building, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Boss, Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Consulting, Diversity, Employee burnout, Employers, Ethics, Executive Teams, Fear, Health, History, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Money, Neuroscience, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, Transformation, Women in the workplace, Workplace Relationships, leadership development | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
I was at a seminar for authors on how to sell more books. Do I want to sell more books? Of course! Yet, there are so many shady ways to go about becoming a “best seller” or, let me put it this way, a “best seller for a day” I must admit I got really turned off.
Here is how it works: you tell everyone you know, and hopefully that is a lot of people, to go on Amazon at exactly the same time on the same day, usually right after the book comes out and buy a copy or two or three of the book. Then you sit back and watch your rating go sky high, at least for that brief moment.
Next, you have the right to state you are an Amazon “best seller”, even if before the week is over you are way down the list of popular books.
I couldn’t do it. I thought about it. In fact I thought about it for a few days. Then I decided that if my book had any merit, it would have to stand on its own, over time.
I must admit, when I check out competing books on leadership, executive development, workplace relationships, conflict resolution, personal and professional growth and the like, I sometimes become frustrated with the games that go with the process of becoming a “known“ commodity.
In any case, if you want to get some serious answers on how to navigate your professional life, how to become a leader of choice, and how to make a difference both at work and at home, please check out my book “Don’t Bring It to Work” (Jossey Bass). You can also take the Pattern Aware quiz at http://www.sylvialafair.com/quiz.html and receive a free half-hour consultation concerning the results. Then, you can decide if the book, or one of our programs, is right for you.
This may be a slower way to best seller status, or it may never happen. Either way is okay, at least I’m playing the game in an ethical and respectful way and that is really what matters to me.
Tags: Book, Ethics, Executive Teams, Integrity, Leadership, leadership programs, Navigate professional life
Posted in Accountability, Business, Coaching, Consulting, Ethics, Honor, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Money, PatternAware, Patterns, The media, Uncategorized, leadership development | 1 Comment »
