Maureen Breeze

The following Maya Angelou quote is a timely calling card for 2020.

“Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances.”

Realize who you are… The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines realize as the act of bring something into concrete existence. These last several months in the midst of this pandemic and tumultuous economy, I’ve witnessed many of you realize who you are as innovators, problem-solvers, servants and savvy leaders. You have had to rethink your goods and services, supply chains and the heart of your mission. And you’ve been pushed out of your comfort zone and challenged to the core, demanding you stand up and bring new parts of yourself into being.

There’s great value in learning how to show up in new ways for different situations, stakeholders and challenges. Many years ago when I served as the Executive Director of JUMPSTART Productions, I quickly learned that working with producers, artists, funders, government agents and audiences demanded different ways of thinking and being. Some circumstances required showing up strategically minded, others creatively or analytically minded. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works for leaders.

Today as an Executive Coach, I enjoy supporting clients as they consider who they need to be in a given situation. I find that we’re typically focused on what we need to do, and then how to go about doing it. But we often overlook the critical third pillar: who we need to be. When we embrace the best mindset for a situation – whether it’s being bold, decisive, cautious, patient, or humble – we can then more easily identify the driving behaviors to engage and critical choices to make for the greatest effect. It can be a great tool for you to use with those you manage at coach. Helping your employees consider when they need to show up can make the difference between mediocre and stellar performance.

Case Western Reserve University professor, Richard Boyatzis’ Intentional Change Theory documents how a strong vision of one’s ideal self in a particular situation helps to support sustainable behavior changes that positively impact performance. And I have found in my work that a significant factor in this ideal self-vision is an appropriate and intentional mindset.

Here are a few to consider:

Curious       Courageous          Open             Decisive

Bold             Perseverant.         Resilient       Patient

Creative      Self-starting          Rebellious    Adventurous

I’ll leave you with a few other questions to ponder:

• How will this mindset help you meet your challenges?

• What might get in the way of maintaining this mindset?

• How will you REALIZE WHO YOU ARE during this time?

I wish you the best as we transition from summer to fall.

Maureen

Uncertainty surrounds us. We don’t have to look far to see its impact. Daily doses of news regarding COVID-19, stock market volatility, and business closures remind us that we live in what the military coined as a VUCA time: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Collectively, we’re experiencing rapid transitions on an unprecedented scale. Remote worksites are rapidly become the norm, borders are closing and social distancing has become a common term in our lexicon.

Managing our response to uncertainty and choosing how we will face each day during this challenging time greatly impacts us as individuals, as well as the collective. In this volatile time, how we think and show up matters.

Here are some thoughts to help you and your teams navigate this time of ambiguity:

Decide what you can and cannot control. Many behavior scientists and psychologists agree that identifying what is within your control creates a sense of self-efficacy. This process allows you to channel nervous energy in a positive direction. What actions can you take today to improve your situation?

At the same time, explore ways you can adapt to what is out of your control. Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” What are ways you can adapt to things out of your control? In order to adapt, how might you limit negativity and positively connect with others? How can you adjust your expectations and improve team morale? You might find some of the following ideas helpful in situations requiring adaptability.

Stoke a sense of optimism. Dr. Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania has spent the majority of his career studying positive psychology and optimism. He defines optimism as a belief that with effort, you can impact the outcome. Years of research illustrate that those with a stronger sense of optimism handle set backs with greater ease and are more resilient.

To cultivate optimism, focus on three things: your thinking, your language, and your successes. If you look at a difficult situation as temporary and changeable over time, you’ll be much more likely to make impactful choices to successfully change or adapt to it. Remember, everything is in a state of motion, and ‘this, too, shall pass.’ Avoid absolute language such as never or always, and make use of the powerful word ‘yet.’ For example, I have not transformed this situation yet. Last of all, set specific, process-oriented goals, which are dependent on your effort, not on matters outside of your control. And celebrate small successes. By acknowledging incremental wins, you’ll boost your optimism.

Engage in the power of giving. Last Sunday a customer at the Coaches Bar and Grill in Ohio left a $2500 tip on his $30 tab, a sizable gift to help the workers who had just learned that their restaurant was closing due to the Coronavirus pandemic.  Nothing creates a sense of wellbeing during turbulent times like giving. Harvard Business School professor, Lara Aknin and her team of colleagues researched the impact that giving has on people across the globe. They found that the positive psychological effect of helping others in need is universal, and in terms of happiness and satisfaction, the act of giving can create an effect of doubling one’s income.

There are many ways we can give during uncertain times. Sending a thoughtful message to a co-worker, saying hello and making eye contact with a store clerk, writing a positive review on Yelp, or volunteering to run to the store for an elderly neighbor are all ways we can give, and at the same time reap emotional benefits.

Find Beauty. When did you last pause to look at a snow-capped mountain, smell the scent of blooming lilacs or watch a stream of water cascade over a waterfall? Taking time to engage in a sense of wonder and to experience awe and beauty has transformative effects. According to Dr. Dacher Keltner of UC Berkely, engaging in beauty, wonder and awe gives people the sense that they have more available time, while increasing feelings of connectedness and positive mood. It’s even been shown in some cases to reduce chronic inflammation. To learn more about the powerful impact awe, wonder and beauty can have on us during times of transition, watch his video, Why Awe is Such and Important Emotion.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/video/item/why_awe_such_important_emotion

I will leave you today with a gift from world-renowned cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. He is recording and posting some of the songs that give him comfort during these days of anxiety. I hope you have a chance to listen to his touching music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBOkHfvNSY

I wish you the best during this ambiguous time,

Maureen Breeze

What do you do when you find yourself at a crossroad? When your current life no longer ‘fits’, yet your next steps are unclear? When you’re ready for a new chapter to begin, but you don’t know how to initiate change?

Regardless of what’s brought you to the crossroad, taking time to reconnect with your values, your curiosities and instincts can help you move forward with greater ease and success.

Many of us approach transition from an analytical mindset. We ask ourselves questions such as: What do I want to do with my time? How can I earn a living? What steps do I need to take to maintain or regain balance in my life? Analyzing your next steps by reflecting on what you currently know and believe is important during transition; however, kernels of personal wisdom to inform your process are available if you take time to connect with yourself on a deeper level.

Through reconnecting with your self, you’ll be able to tap into your creativity and intuition; tools that will help you discover new pathways for your life. At the same time, it will help you build a reservoir of emotional energy, which is critical for launching a new trajectory. How many times have said to yourself, “I’d make a change if only I had the energy?”

So how do we foster this deep reconnection, especially when our lives are busy or when we’re healing from a difficult episode? Here are a few strategies for self-connection that will reenergize you while revealing opportunities and guiding your choices.

• • Revisit what you once loved. What brought you joy as a child? What stirred wonder in your soul? What had you flying out of bed on a Saturday morning brimming with anticipation? Reflecting on experiences that once fully engaged you shed light on what you might want to reintroduce into your life. What experiences brought you joy that you’d like to tap back into?
  • Sing and dance. You might feel that you’re too old to sing and dance. Maybe you’re tone deaf or move as if you have two left feet. It doesn’t matter. Music and movement help us get out of our heads, if only temporarily, and allow us to experience different senses. When analysis paralysis strikes, or when you get on the gerbil wheel of your own thoughts, breaking these patterns through kinesthetic experiences of singing and dancing creates opportunities for new insights to emerge. And research confirms that singing and dancing release endorphins that provide a calming, yet energizing effect, while increasing the neuroplasticity in your brain. Reconnecting to these primal activities improves your health and helps you navigate the stress that can accompany life transitions (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23089077). How can you reconnect with music and movement?
  • Make a weekly date with yourself. In Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist Way, she encourages artists to go on a weekly date by themselves to explore something that makes them curious. It could be an outing with an old camera, a trip to wander the aisles of a hard ware or fabric store, or a hike in the woods. The only rules: go alone, make it a weekly ritual, and explore what strikes you. This sage advice transfers wonderfully to women in transition. Remember, you are born with a creative capacity. Taking weekly dates with yourself allows you to access your creative side, which can then help you identify new possibilities for your next life chapter. What will you do on a date with yourself this week?
  • Act on your intuition. We often hope for a ‘sign’ to guide our next steps; a signal to tell us whether to take a new job, move to a new city, or leave a relationship. Yes – intuition can guide you well in these big life moments. However, if you’re not used to listening deeply to yourself, it can be hard to access. You can help yourself by building your intuition muscle. How often do you get a hunch to call a friend out of the blue? To tell someone what they mean to you? To slow down when you’re driving? It’s common for us to have intuitive hits that we ignore. And often, it’s only later or after the fact that we reconnect with our hunches and recognize that our intuition was prompting us to action. So make an effort to listen to yourself daily when you get a hunch to reach out to someone, to clean out that closet, or read a certain article. Then act on it. You’ll be developing your ability to perceive and intuit situations on a deeper level, honing a capacity that will help you effectively navigate your crossroad. What hunches have called you to action recently?
  • Designate time for reconnection. Only you can ensure you have time for reconnecting with yourself. No one will give it to you. Schedule it on your calendar. Institute a $50 cancellation fee if that helps. Your time is as worthy as your dentist’s. You don’t have to schedule hours on end. It can be shorter segments, but ones that allow for unbroken focus on an activity that fosters reconnection. Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed, writes about women’s greatest enemy – a lack of time to herself. This lack of time impacts our creativity and our ability to give voice to the ideas we have for our lives. So choose what time you’re willing to dedicate for reconnection and make it a priority. Committing to yourself in practice will in turn feed your energy. When will regular time for reconnection be scheduled on your calendar?

Making an effort to connect to what you know, believe, sense and perceive will give you clarity and inspiration. You might be surprised at how energizing this process can be, and the fuel it provides for moving forward.

Building Manager and Leadership Fitness

Before entering the field of professional and organizational development, I was a choreographer and professional dancer. During these years I spent hours everyday standing at a ballet barre executing a series of exercises strategically designed to hone balance, agility, strength and endurance.

This deliberate approach to fitness is critical to the health of a dancer. If a dancer is stronger than he or she is flexible, a muscle will be pulled. If flexibility surpasses strength, overstretched ligaments result. And if training for balance is neglected, a dancer is vulnerable to serious falls.

Watch this clip here of the famed ballet dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov, as he displays this well-honed fitness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajWpEAhj2uY). His athleticism and artistry are dependent on rigorous training for balance, physical agility, extreme strength and endurance.

In today’s fast-paced and global economy, the workplace requires a parallel need for leadership and managerial fitness in each of these domains.

Today, as a leader and/or manager you are asked to balance competing demands inherent in global markets. You’re expected to balance the needs of a diverse workforce. You’re required to address the conflicting priorities of challenging work schedules and personal lives, and you must navigate the push and pull of rapidly changing technology.

What pulls you off BALANCE?

Do you find yourself dealing with technology that becomes obsolete in just a few short years, managing a workforce ranging from Baby Boomers to Generation Z, or communicating across intercontinental time zones? These are just a few of the norms that require agility in terms of how we manage both people and processes. Developing this agility is arguably one of the most significant challenges leaders face compared to 30 years ago.

Where do you need greater AGILITY?

Professional strength takes many forms. It involves the ability to influence and persuade; the capacity to comport yourself in a commanding way; to communicate with power and authority; to galvanize energy until a tipping point of momentum is reached; and to stand strong in a storm and not falter in your commitment.

Resilience is at the heart of building professional strength, and often it’s when we’re at our breaking point that we develop the muscle and fortitude needed for effective leadership.

What will STRONG look like for you in 2020?

Jim Collins, author of bestselling books Good to Great and Great by Choice, researched organizations across industries that outperformed their competitors by a factor of 10 to see what competencies led to success. One of the findings was that companies that had clear upper and lower limits of activity– to ensure they pushed ahead but not so much that they became overextended – were more likely to endure good times and bad. It’s similar on a personal level. Knowing your limits to keep you moving forward without the risk of burning out, are key to achieving personal and professional goals – whether it’s writing at least 500 words a day, but no more than a chapter a week of that novel aching to be born, or running at least one mile a day, but no more than 5, to improve cardio-vascular health.

What are your upper and lower levels of activity for professional and personal ENDURANCE?

Being able to pivot your company’s direction in reaction to new technology, include diverse perspectives for a balanced view, and do the heavy lifting to get a startup going are just a few of the fitness abilities needed to thrive in the world of work.

My Australian colleague, Dr. Annette Watkins, and I are excited to facilitate BASE Camp for Leaders and Managers at Purdue University’s International Council of Purdue Women’s Conference on April 1st, 2020, where we will explore strategies for building balance, agility, strength and endurance.

We’d love to hear your thoughts to the questions posted above! If you’d like to share them, please email me at [email protected].

For centuries, native practitioners of the Polynesian art, ‘wayfinding,’ traveled from island to island by honing their attention on the world around them. From canoes, they gathered information from the swell of the tides, the direction and temperature of the wind, the flight of birds, and the stars in the sky. They masterfully attended to the rich, yet subtle clues in their environment to navigate unchartered territory.

These wayfinding practices, many which have been lost due to modern technology, serve as a valuable metaphor for how focused attention can help us travel through unknown stages in our lives. When moving through a major life transition, we often feel unmoored and rudderless, unsure of where to go and how to make the critical decisions needed to create our next life chapter.

The wayfinders were masters at using their deep level attention to gather data for informed decision making. Today, there’s a huge push for collecting big data to manage societal decisions ranging from pricing to production to policy. However, we often neglect gathering personal data from our internal systems to inform our intuition and cognitive decision-making abilities. In fact, a new company, Node, believes it has created artificial intuition, and is selling technology that claims to capture the ‘human sensation of having a hunch.” According to an article in Fortune magazine, the technology will be used to help managers make business decisions.

While it sounds fascinating, it’s hard not to wonder what the costs will be for outsourcing intuition to technology.

Instead, what if we strive to model the strategies of the wayfinders by bringing focused attention to our lives and transition decisions? What if we engage deep-level attention to help us chart what intrigues, puzzles, excites, drains and conflicts us? What if we access our intuitive resources to help us navigate the journey to our next life chapter?

Engaging in deep focus and reflection isn’t always easy. It requires energy and commitment. In a study by the National Institute of Health, researchers scanned the brains of over 50 executives as they engaged in deep-level exploratory thinking. This deep-level thinking activated the participants’ executive centers in the brain – the region responsible for controlling attention and one that requires intentional focus. When participants engaged in surface-oriented thinking, the brain region that processes anticipation and reward was activated. This region is known as the pleasure pathway or reward center and explains why we often prefer answering easy emails over writing that complicated report. The science confirms that thinking deeply involves effort and focused attention. However, attuning ourselves in this manner brings a wealth of information regarding our physiological responses, energy, moods, curiosities, and inner knowledge. It fuels an awareness that serves as an internal compass, calibrated to our unique make-up that can guide us through transition.

Taking time to focus our attention has additional benefits. Once we commit to thinking about something, our brain goes on high alert and notices things we might have missed beforehand. Have you ever experienced thinking about something, for example having a child or buying a certain type of car, and suddenly you see pregnant women or the model of car you’re considering at every corner? Working with focused attention can be like this when navigating a life transition. If you place your attention to specific questions, you’ll begin observing insights and answers you may have overlooked before.

Once you focus your attention on gathering personal and internal data about your transition, you’re positioned well to make decisions and mindfully set intentions for your next chapter. These intentions then guide your reinvention process. Who do you intend to become? What do you intend to do? How do you envision going about this? Intentions become your transition roadmap.

Armed with intentions informed by focused attention, you’re then ready to begin the work of manifestation. The overuse of the word manifest in today’s lexicon is troubling. It’s common to hear people say, “I’m going to manifest this or that,” as if it’s as easy as waving a wand. Manifestation – the act of bringing something into focus – requires diligence, work and follow through. It’s the creative process of bringing something into being that wasn’t apparent before and involves laser-like focus, clarity of intention, deliberate action, and committed answers to the following questions: With whom do you surround yourself? How do you sustain your energy? What commitments are you willing to make?

At Cultivage we encourage you think like a wayfarer. Put your oars in the water and focus your attention to glean insights from the world outside and inside you as you navigate your professional or personal transition.