Leadership – Alchemy Coaching

What really hurts us

May 9, 2016May 13, 2016 Alex Emotional intelligence, Latest, Leadership

What hurts us is believing things that aren’t true and acting as if they were.

We exist in a culture that sends us myriad messages that we may not be conscious of receiving. Messages like ‘being emotional is bad’, ‘riches and power make you successful’, ‘what work you do is who you are’ to highlight a few. When we don’t question these ideas they become an invisible backdrop to all the decisions we make and the opinions we hold. For example: if you think that being emotional is bad then you will judge people as bad whenever you feel or see an emotional response. This becomes instinctual over time. You will see the emotional response and, before you know it, you will be standing in ‘righteous’ judgment. Righteous because you believe what you see is bad. The path to transformation lies in being able to look more deeply at the situation. The problem is not being emotional. The problem is believing that it is bad. This is an important distinction for emotional intelligence. Here’s what is more true:

1. We are all emotional.
2. To be authentic as individuals we need to fully embrace this idea.
3. To be effective in our lives we need to be clear about our emotion state constantly.
4. To make a difference we need to understand and master the expression of our emotions skilfully.

This work is not just important for emotional intelligence. It is at the heart of being human. When we reject an integral part of our nature we reject ourselves. When we reject ourselves it shows up in the world as rejection from others. Others sense our own judgment and follow the lead we have given them. This is when the hurt begins. When we feel it from outside of ourselves it is easy to assign it as an external force. They are rejecting me. Many people get stuck here and because they are unable to accept their response as something inherently personal. If you want to heal the place to start is with yourself. Preventing the hurt in the first place begins with the ability to be with our emotions as they arise. Our emotions are spontaneous and they are catalysed by our experiences. So initially you cannot stop them occurring. The best tool you have to work with is your curiousity. Be interested in what causes a certain response within you. When you reflect on your reactions you will begin to see that your responses follow patterns. For example when someone says something to me in certain way I always react in the same way. Your reaction will be caused by a thought that you believe is true. When you become curious about the cause of your reaction you will begin to see that you believe something that might not be true for the other person. For example a habitual angry reaction towards perceived rudeness can become an inquiry into behaviour that you perceive as rude. A simple and brave conversation about what you perceive and feel has the power to shift a strong emotional reaction instantly. This is the start of self-awareness. You can only change things that you are aware of so once you see a pattern of reaction you can explore what that means for you. You may be comfortable with it or you may wish you could direct your emotional energy in a different way. The path to shifting habitual patterns is generally not a smooth or easy one however it is an inspiring one. Open communication is a powerful tool for change. This is emotional intelligence in action. Developing emotional intelligence changes our lives. When we are able to respond in a way that feels skilful we hurt less and we are able to connect more authentically with others.

Right Action

February 10, 2016February 10, 2016 Alex Courage, Latest, Leadership

I am very familiar with the feeling of indecision. It has plagued me for as long as I remember. The way it plays out for me is that I get paralysed and sit in a place of no action. It is not a peaceful place to be. Because I am a keen observer of human behaviour, my curiosity leads me to wonder and notice what happens for others. Using two distinct polarities, there are people for whom action is immediate and there are people, like me, for whom caution before action is the habitual response. It is easy to judge both these states.

What is apparent as I deepen my investigation is the fact that it is not the action or inaction that matters, but the intention behind it. It appears that wisdom lies very close to discomfort. When the opportunity to act arises there will be a moment of choice. In choice there is always discomfort because we are giving up one thing in favour of another. There is a necessary letting go. Sometimes the choice may feel obvious and easy, at other times, less so. When it is less clear, it may mean that we need to spend a little longer in the space of discomfort before ‘right action’ emerges. It is easy to judge discomfort as bad and make a decision too quickly.

The idea of right action is one that captures my attention. It is easy to be busy in activity. It is less easy to be in the discomfort of waiting for the ‘right action’ to emerge. I am not talking about big decisions although these can be felt in exactly the same way. I am talking about simple everyday things. For example, if someone requests something of me that I am not willing to do I will feel a ‘no’ arise in my gut. However my personality has a very strong ‘keep the peace’ focus so I can almost as quickly override the initial ‘no’ and watch myself saying “yes”. My self-coaching practice has taught me to stop at this point and notice what is going on inside of me. What happens as a result of that curious pause is that I can start to acknowledge and anticipate the possibility of ‘No’. My responses take all kinds of shape. Initially I would find myself explaining the whole story of ‘No’. This still reflects my ‘keep the peace’ state; ‘if I tell you the whole story you can’t be cross with me’ type thinking.

These days I am able to sit even longer in the discomfort of feeling a ‘no’ while waiting for the way to communicate emerges. What I have found is that waiting in discomfort allows a clearer response. When I can get beneath my defences I find the truth, and my experience is, that when I am able to communicate the truth in me it lands so gently and easily that my original discomfort is gone. And most often it is well received by the listener.

The key to staying in discomfort is breathing; deep, long breaths that keep the shoulders down and the chest expanding. Discomfort tells us something needs to be different and breathing opens us up to new possibilities.

The words of Lao-Tzu in 500BC are still relevant today and summarise this idea beautifully:
“Do you have the patience to wait, till your mud settles and the water is clear
Can you remain unmoving until right action arises by itself?”

Leadership comes from within

October 15, 2010January 17, 2016 Alex Courage, Leadership

“Inflexible mentality remains the biggest stumbling block to change.” Mikhail Gorbachev

Leadership is a subject that has always fascinated me. ‘Are leaders made or born?’ Stephen Covey, an expert on leadership, suggests that leaders are self-made. That implies that I can decide to be a leader. This got me thinking and this article explores the idea that leaders can be self-made.

If I decide I want to be a leader how do I begin? My belief is that all leadership starts within. I believe all great leaders of others began as great leaders of themselves. I call this personal leadership. To establish my current level of personal leadership I need to establish whether I am making decisions, taking action, changing it if necessary and driving my life in way that achieves my goals. The question being, ‘Am I the best CEO for my journey?’ I often hear people say, “if only this, if only that wasn’t.” As the custodian of my well being and success the notion that I need to wait for external circumstances to change to make my own experience okay is disempowering. What if things never change?

As we know things always change, and that is part of the problem. What if they don’t change the way I would like them to change? What then? Am I doomed to perpetual unhappiness until things go my way? But what if I get to choose? Things happen. I cannot control what happens to me, I can only control how I respond. Trying to control my environment is, quite simply, energetically exhausting and ineffective. So a new personal action strategy is required.

Controlling how you respond is the first step. You already choose your reaction to all of your circumstances however claiming responsibility for these choices and claiming your power in these choices is possibly the most challenging initial internal shift towards being your ultimate CEO. It often seems easier to pass off the responsibility and embrace our inner victim, “what option did I have?”, “what was I supposed to do?”, “my reaction was totally normal”. Easy and ‘normal’ as this may be, it is not effective. It doesn’t change anything. So understanding that you are always responsible for your choices is key.

The second step is to ask, ‘what am I choosing?’ If we use the current economic environment circumstance as an example: Ask yourself, how am I responding? Am I weighed down and resentful about how this is affecting me? Am I taking it in my stride as one of those things that happens that I need to make decisions around? All these questions are choices that I make constantly. To be an effective personal leader I must be conscious of what choices I am making.

The third step is to question whether that choice is appropriate or not. So the question becomes; ‘I have chosen to react or respond in a certain way, is this response getting me closer to my personal goals?’ The answer to this question will establish whether I need to modify my personal action strategy or not. The strategy may be as simple as looking at the situation differently or as difficult as recognizing the need to make new choices. I am aware that I am reducing a complex concept to rather simple terms to keep the idea of personal leadership in focus. There is nothing simple about changing myself and if I am currently dissatisfied with how my life is, the only person who can change that is me.

Consciously controlling my response to the world is easier said than done. It requires learning and knowing what I believe about myself, about the people around me and about the world. As a child I developed beliefs about the world from the people that raised me. At that time I learned to respond with their belief system. I believe this rests at the core of leadership skill. If my reactions to the world are rooted in the belief systems of others versus my own, the power and insight with which I make my decisions will be profoundly weaker and less consistent. I will lack the conviction that I require to navigate my life and to comfortably embrace my inner leader.

Generally we believe that our thoughts are rational and appropriate. However, the fact that they are closely united in the ego mean that they might not be. The ego dictates how I respond in the world. Everyone has an ego and it is fragile, it believes in scarcity and control. So any circumstance that feels threatening will ignite the less rational parts of my ego and I will find myself reacting with disproportionate emotion to an external stimulus as banal as a comment, a tone of voice or a facial expression.

There is a form of psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis that defines the ego as holding three states, namely parent, adult and child. This means that two thirds of our ego is potentially behaving as a parent or child and one third as an adult. The adult is the only ego state that is present, rational and appropriate. So if we spend most of our time in our parent or child ego state we are spending very little time being rational or appropriate. The aim of this form of psychotherapy is to get the individual to expand their adult ego state as far as possible. Effective personal leadership will lie in us being able to access the adult part of our ego most of the time. We do this through working on our self-awareness and our self-management which reveals itself in our choice of behaviour to external stimuli.

We know that for peace in the world we need peace in our hearts. So too I believe that for true leaders in the world we need people who are true leaders of their lives. I believe Stephen Covey to be correct in his idea that leaders are self-made. My conclusion is that leadership is not a quality in an individual; it is a choice I make about what I want for myself. If I blame others for my experience of life I put my power in their hands. If I take responsibility for my choices I access my power and I begin to lead. I become the author of my future by leading in the present. If I can lead myself powerfully into my future then, and only then, I may be ready to lead the world.