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The year 2020 has been a tumultuous year, and we’re only halfway through! Whatever plans we had have been greatly modified or completely thrown out.
There are echoes of the health challenges of HIV/AIDS and smallpox. Echoes of the financial crises of 1929 and 2008. Echoes of social unrest of 1968 and Apartheid.
You might throw up your hands in despair that humanity isn’t advancing at all. That we’re destined to follow a path outside anyone’s control.
Read the rest of this entry »As I mentioned last week David Peterson is the Director of Executive Coaching & Leadership at Google.
He mentioned a phrase which stuck with me: “There’s no learning in the comfort zone, and there’s no comfort in the learning zone.” Last week I talked about the first part, today I’d like to focus on the second.
Why does learning push you out of your comfort zone?
Read the rest of this entry »I had a chance to see a presentation by David Peterson recently; he’s the Director of Executive Coaching & Leadership at Google. And a brilliant coach!
He mentioned a phrase which stuck with me: “There’s no learning in the comfort zone.” There’s actually a second part of the statement, but I’m going to talk about that next week.
So why would the comfort zone be a place of no learning?
What’s the motivation behind your marketing efforts?
This is a real struggle for many businesses right now, because many existing efforts don’t seem to be working. They’re advertising like crazy, but sales have dried up because customers are extraordinarily cautious.
And the strong “buy my stuff!!!” messages can seem overbearing and insensitive.
We tend to focus an awful lot on innovation for technology and products. Which are fine, but there’s a different kind of improvement we need even more.
Redesigning our society.
This comes to mind because of recent protests of social injustice, yes. But I also look at what other places in our culture which are also broken:
Read the rest of this entry »You may be asking people to make tough sacrifices right now. Reduced hours, changing jobs, making tough decisions.
You’ve thought a lot about it, so you’ve laid out the new plans. Letting every person know what they need to do and how.
But this is missing a key element: Why?
Read the rest of this entry »In uncertain times, we rely on confidence from others around us. We look to political, community, and business leaders to provide direction.
But more than being told what to do, we want to know why. Part of that is assigning blame for something out of our control, but that’s only the negative side of it.
On the good side, we’re looking for a reason to get out of the fight-or-flight response. Our higher selves want to move forward with purpose and intention.
Read the rest of this entry »Video conferencing has taken over our lives! Many of us are feeling the effects.
And the loss of human contact.
I was talking about this with a friend recently. She’s an expert in public speaking, and has been working with presenters to adapt themselves to the online format. The changes go a lot deeper than you might think!
Read the rest of this entry »Many of my readers are really struggling right now. Loss of work, lack of direction, confusion.
I had a chance to coach someone recently who was sensing this quite profoundly. Confined to his house, without work prospects, he’s finding it hard to move forward in any useful direction.
But here’s the thing: he’s actually been given a gift.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a very stressful time, so we’re all doing it.
Making mistakes.
That’s just par for the course, really. And it doesn’t help that information and advice is constantly changing. Something which seemed right yesterday may feel like totally the wrong thing today.
