Ideas that Matter

By University of Denver Center for Professional Development

In the dynamic landscape of professional development, organizations increasingly recognize the pivotal role of coaching in fostering leadership excellence and driving organizational success. Recently, the University of Denver’s Center for Professional Development (CPD) successfully concluded the first of two Coaching Skills certificate programs tailored for leaders at Fiore & Sons, Inc., a privately held heavy civil contractor in Colorado. Facilitated by Cultivage Principal, Maureen Breeze, an esteemed coach and instructor with over 25 years of expertise, the program delivered transformative insights and actionable strategies to empower participants in unlocking their full potential as leaders.

With a robust background in leadership development, coaching, and executive management across diverse industries and global contexts, Maureen Breeze brought a wealth of knowledge and practical wisdom to the program. She developed a tailored learning experience, enriching the curriculum with real-world case studies and personalized content that resonated deeply with the participants’ roles and challenges at Fiore & Sons.

One of the key highlights of the program was the customization of coaching content to address the specific needs and dynamics of Fiore & Sons. Through interactive exercises, participants were equipped with tools to enhance their coaching efficacy and drive sustainable growth within their respective roles. From exploring models for giving feedback to engaging guests from within the company for insightful discussions, the program fostered a holistic learning environment that seamlessly integrated theory with practical application.

The diverse cohort of leaders, including Site Superintendents, General Superintendents, Directors of Operations, and Project Management, attested to the program’s profound impact on their professional growth and skill development. Their glowing testimonials underscored the effectiveness of Breeze’s teaching methodology and the program’s relevance in empowering high-performing individuals to further excel in their roles.

The significance of coaching skills training for Fiore & Sons lies in its commitment to fostering a culture of continuous learning and talent development. By investing in the personal and professional growth of its employees, Fiore & Sons reinforces its dedication to nurturing future leaders and driving organizational excellence.

Managing conflict is one of our most requested topics for leadership training. It’s no surprise. Whether conflicts exist at the organizational, team, or individual level, they can create distractions and drain energy. However, research shows that when conflicts are managed well, they can yield better decisions and improved outcomes (Tjosvold, Wong, Chen, 2014). One of the first steps to managing conflict well depends on your mindset and how you position yourself within the context of the challenge.

Several years ago, I was introduced to a practice by Aldo Civico, lecturer in the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, that I now incorporate in all my conflict management trainings.

To engage people in this practice, Civico asks you to consider a conflict you are experiencing. As you think about the conflict, he invites you to answer the following questions:

 

1. What is the problem?
2. What is the source of this problem?
3. Who is to blame?
4. What is blocking the solution?
5. What limitations do you face in dealing with it?

He asks how you feel. Typically, people report feeling frustrated, stirred, anxious, or stuck.

Then, Civico invites you to write reflections to this second round of questions:

1. Who do I want to be within the context of this situation?
2. What inner resources will help me achieve this?
3. How might I look, sound, and operate?
4. How might this impact the situation?
5. How might this impact my life?

After reflecting on these questions most people report feeling more optimistic, grounded, and even hopeful.

A critical difference between these lists of questions is that the first focuses on the problem, while the second focuses on the outcome. Perhaps more importantly, the second list of questions brings into focus who you want to be while framing an opportunity for growth. These questions engage us in the ultimate creative act of deciding how we want to show up and manage ourselves in the face of challenges.

As an Executive Coach, I often have my clients respond to this second list of questions at the start of the engagement. Whether they are dealing with conflict or simply want to grow in their leadership, these questions help them intentionally decide who they want to be and how they want to show up during the process. These intentions can be powerful as they ride the ups and downs inherent to leadership responsibilities. You might also find them to be a powerful tool to share with your team as you embark on collaboration and problem-solving together.

 

A recent client of mine enrolled in coaching after receiving a long sought after promotion. While elated by the new opportunity, increased pay, and powerful title, she was in serious distress. Her team was short-staffed and struggled to get the right people on board. The organization was contemplating an expansion into a new market, which she disagreed with and believed would further overwhelm her team. In addition, with her deep institutional knowledge, she had always been the ‘go to’ person at the firm, yet she could no longer balance everyone’s requests with her new responsibilities.

She was burning out and seriously considered quitting. The disruptions, both good and bad, were too much to absorb.

Are you dealing with workplace disruptions that create stress?

Perhaps you are facing new technologies, market expansion/reduction, personnel reductions, reallocated workloads, new leadership, a new “Work from Home” policy, or residual supply chain effects. The list can feel endless.

Disruptions abound and our ability to be resilient in the face of them is critical to both our well-being and organizational success. Research shows that high levels of resilience positively influence employee satisfaction and engagement. And employees managing well-being and mental health challenges are four times more likely than others to leave organizations (McKinsey State of the Organization, 2023).

As an executive coach, I am often asked how leaders can build resilience, both for themselves and their direct reports. I begin by emphasizing that not all stress is bad. When we experience eudaemonic stress – stress that arises from the pursuit of excellence & self-fulfillment through a virtue- or value-driven lifestyle – it makes us healthier, leads to peak performance, and helps us thrive. But when we experience distress in the workplace – a negative mental state that leads to severe psychological and emotional pain, anxiety, and sorrow – it can lead to burnout where we have no emotional reserves to bounce back.

So, the first step involves identifying your experiences as either healthy workplace stress or dangerous workplace distress. You can then explore healthy ways to manage stress and eliminate factors causing distress.

And once you’ve eliminated the factors contributing to distress that are within your control, consider taking the following steps to build resilience:

Manage Your Brain Power

Implement scheduling strategies to retain focus. Put discrete time on your calendar to manage emails as opposed to checking them continuously throughout the day.

Schedule time for strategic thinking and turn off notifications that pull your focus. The goal is to avoid context shifting – moving in and out of work projects – which taxes the brain and leads to cognitive overload and fatigue.

Take conscious breaks throughout your day. The brain can stay highly focused for 20 minutes, and optimal work block times are typically between 90 and 120 minutes. To take a quick brain break, walk around the office, grab a glass of water, or do standing stretches to rest and refuel.

Build Healthy Connections

Research shows that an individual’s resilience can be bolstered by investing in strong relationships and networks. A positive interaction with a friend or close colleague can help make meaning of difficult situations, provide empathetic support, and harness confidence to push through difficult periods.

Create a sense of belonging in your organization. Research indicates that when employees feel like they belong in an organization, there is a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days. Simple steps such as encouraging intentional hellos/good-byes at the start and end of the day, recognizing birthdays and work anniversaries, implementing systems for company-wide acknowledgement of employee contributions, and formalizing mentorship relationships can significantly impact employee experience and retention.

Strive for Emotional Stability

Incorporate strategies to manage emotional triggers that exacerbate stress. Identify what typically triggers you and find a way to pause before responding. For example, take five deep breaths, momentarily walk away from a difficult situation and collect yourself, or table a response until the next day if possible. The goal is to buy time to create an intentional response rather than emotionally react to a triggering situation.

Minimize ambiguity for yourself and your team whenever possible, by clarifying expectations and setting clean agreements for work processes and deliverables. When ambiguity is unavoidable, take time to acknowledge and normalize it as part of the process.

Develop Optimism

Dr. Martin Seligman’s decades of research points to optimism as a critical contributor to resilience. He defines optimism as the belief that with effort, you can impact the outcome. Distress can result from exerting effort on issues outside of our control. However, identifying what is within your control and strategically applying effort to impact the outcome leads to feelings of efficacy and ultimately strengthens resiliency.

Identify potential solutions to problems, even if you don’t act on them. It is difficult to be resilient when we believe we are backed into a corner with no alternatives. One way to combat this is to ask yourself, “What are three things I can do now?” While the solutions you generate may not be great, they can lift you from a feeling of helplessness into a state of possibility. Research shows that having options, even if they aren’t optimal, reduces distress.

 

As my client worked on the steps outlined above, she realized she couldn’t ultimately decide whether the organization expanded into new markets, but she could control how she communicated her points of view on the matter in influential ways. She doubled down on her efforts to effectively onboard new team members and carefully delegated new responsibilities to her team to give them opportunities to grow while giving her more time to do strategic work. And perhaps most importantly, she scoped her time for managing emails to the first and last hours of the day and turned off all notifications so that she could manage her focus and reduce brain fatigue. While her stress load is still significant, she has moved out of distress and is growing in her new role that she worked so hard to achieve.

Several weeks ago, Bonnie Raitt entertained a sold-out crowd at the picturesque Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado. Under a brilliant full moon, she performed with grace and humility, as though it were the most important concert of her career. She humbly told the audience she was nervous to sing a ballad in front of Diana Reeves, who happened to be in the audience, but that she would ‘lean in’ to her nerves. Later, she offered insights into her creative inspiration and shared stories of inner demons she’d wrestled throughout her life. And over and over, she graciously thanked her family, friends, and fans.

At one point, she told the audience she needed to collect herself and paused for a moment in silence. Then she sat on a simple stool and sang her Grammy award-winning hit, “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” With every word, you felt the pain, disappointment, and resolution as if she were living the experience in real time. The silent crowd was rapt.

In this magical moment, her star power matched her humility. Her artistic brilliance let the audience see how authentically human she is.

At Cultivage, we’ve been reflecting on humility a lot lately. It has become a cornerstone concept for our leadership curriculum. Humility seems to be the crystalizing ingredient when it comes to taking ownership of our work, improving our abilities, and starting anew in the face of setbacks.

Humility is not to be confused with humiliation – an experience that creates shame – but rather recognized as a state of deep self-awareness where we embrace our strengths and weaknesses. A sense of humility helps us see where we can get better. It is not self-deprecating; instead, it is acknowledging that we have much to learn. And it is the perfect sword to fight the grips of perfectionism.

Practicing humility can be hard, especially for those in leadership positions. Being humble can challenge our perceptions of power. It requires courage and curiosity to embrace opportunities for growth and to resist putting ourselves above others. When a leader has the humility to ask her team how she can do better, it can impact the perception of the power dynamic. And when a man leaves a well-established career to start over and chart a new adventure, it can challenge his sense of personal power, confidence, and identity.

It is no surprise that humility requires a strong sense of self. The word humility comes from the Latin word humilitas, which means ‘of the earth.’ The Humble Warrior pose in yoga offers a great visual: the legs are in a wide stance for grounded stability, the torso dropped and curled to bow to the earth, and the hands clasped behind the back and reaching upward to the sky. The pose requires control, strength, balance, and flexibility, much like the state of humility.

Dr. David Hawkins, a philosopher and medical doctor, writes that “…Humility, despite its negative public and social image in some quarters of society, is indicative of expertise, wisdom, and maturity.” And many spiritual traditions believe that deep spiritual maturity can only be achieved through the practice and principle of humility.

Practicing humility requires deep introspection. Perhaps this is why life-shattering events often bring about our humility. When we are taken to our knees, we are more likely to ask the big questions, tune in, and see the world – and our place in it – differently.

The book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, takes the humbling experiences of people who have “fallen, failed, or gone down” in some way and eloquently reframes them as a turning point in the trajectory of those people’s lives. According to author Richard Rohr, these humbling moments are often the launch point for the second half of life where we grow internally. He values these experiences so much that he writes, “I pray for a humbling experience every day.”

To show up with humility demands we honestly assess and accept our contributions—both good and bad—to any given situation. From this vantage point, we can acknowledge where we come up short, ask for feedback and support to get better, and act on opportunities for growth.

Here are my 10 favorite questions to support a humble mindset:

1. What can I learn?

1. Where are my blind spots?

1. What don’t I understand?

1. What am I fearful of?

1. What am I avoiding?

1. Where do I need strength?

1. Where do I need support?

1. Where do I need to pause and listen?

1. What might I learn here that may be of help to others?

1. How can I be of service in this situation?

What does humility mean to you? Where do you see humility in the world around you?

Welcome to the second week of January. This month is named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transition. Pictures of Janus typically have two faces with one looking forward to the future and one looking back to the past. Today, January continues to be a time for looking forward and back, inviting us to rethink and reset how we work, lead, and live.

While you may resist the practice of New Year’s resolutions believing that they are doomed to fail, research shows that using dates such as birthdays and the new year creates a ‘fresh start’ effect that helps us galvanize aspirational behaviors to initiate and achieve goals. From a statistical perspective, people are more likely to successfully change behaviors on these days than other times throughout the year. Katy Milkman, professor at Wharton and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, finds that new beginnings marked by such dates “offer a kind of psychological do-over” where people can distance themselves from past failures, feel more optimistic about their future, and are more likely to set and follow through on goals.

However, this month can be about more than setting goals for exercise, health, and other habits. It can be a time for resolve – a time for deciding a more subtle, but equally powerful way of moving through a new year. What would it look like if you approach this year from a place of curiosity? And what might result from asking yourself at every possible turn “what can I learn from this experience?”  What would it look like if your focus is being of service? And what would evolve if you asked yourself everyday “what can I do to positively impact this person, team, customer, or situation?” Resolutions such as these can have a tsunami effect on one’s life.

So, if you can take advantage of January as a time to reset and resolve new habits or perspectives, the challenge then becomes maintaining the focus and commitment well into 2022. Here are a few of my favorite strategies to launch fresh starts:

Envision What is Possible: Case Western Reserve University researchers Richard Boyatzis and Anthony Jack used fMRI imaging to confirm that holding a strong vision of what you want activates areas of the brain that are critical for motivation and behavior change. They encourage developing a vision not of what you ‘ought’ to do or be, but what you truly want to do or be to tap into this motivation. Taking time to deeply imagine this vision, to try it on, and feel it come alive in you requires reflective effort. What will it look like if you achieve what you desire? How will you feel? How will it impact the way you speak, act, move and think?

Consider Process vs. Outcome Oriented Goals: Once you clarify your vision, set process-oriented goals that are within your control. I’ll share an example from a soccer player I know who set the goal of scoring 10 times in the season. While this goal aligned with his vision of a winning season, it was largely out of his control since he couldn’t predict his playing time, opponents’ strength, etc. So, he shifted to three process-oriented goals: refining his left foot shot, improving his ‘take-off’ speed when sprinting, and mastering quick passes with the mid-fielder to better position himself for scoring opportunities. He could work on these goals everyday regardless of his playing time in games. Yet, progress with these goals positioned him well when the opportunities to step into the game came his way. It is no different at work. Let’s imagine your vision for 2022 is to listen more effectively to your team. Process-oriented goals such as reflecting for three minutes to quiet your mind before you going into a meeting, thinking about who will be present and what they might be experiencing, asking specific questions to check-in and see how they are doing, and practicing pausing to let others speak before you offer your opinion can position you well for listening. When you think about your vision, what process-oriented goals can you set that are within your control?

Create Favorable Conditions: To think about creating favorable conditions for yourself, consider the following questions: Do you need to protect your sleep to have the energy you need? How might consistent time spent with a trusted advisor help you? How might blocking off two hours a week to go to your favorite coffee shop and work on your vision help you make progress? Think about the environments that help you do your best work or be your best self. Consider the people who bring out your best. Determine the time of day or day of week when you feel the best. How can you create favorable conditions for yourself?

Anticipate Obstacles: What might stand in your way? Obstacles are to be expected. However, it is common to avoid thinking ahead and planning for what may be difficult.  Anticipating obstacles isn’t about listing every possible thing that can go wrong, but rather making an honest assessment of potential pitfalls. Will a difficult relationship with one of your co-workers trigger negative behavior? Will a busy end-of-quarter keep you from doing the important innovative thinking your leadership requires? Having a strategy in place when things don’t go as planned can help you avoid the ‘what the hell effect’ that results from hitting roadblocks, which can tempt you to give up and surrender your vision.

Harness Your Drive: Perhaps nothing can help you succeed at your vision more than understanding why it is important to you. This idea ties back to visions that you want vs. visions that you ought to have. Think of the difference between committing to a health regimen because the doctor tells you that you should vs. committing to it so that you can be agile and prepared for an upcoming ski reunion with your friends. Understanding your ‘why’ gives you a strong emotional connection to your goals as it creates an alignment between what you are choosing and your core values. Research confirms that the area of your brain that processes emotions is engaged when you make decisions. And when you have a powerful emotional connection to your goals, you are more likely to make the positive decisions to move forward and experience progress. Why is your vision important to you today? What will the rewards be if you are successful executing this vision? What will your life be like if you forego this vision? What do you want to say about this situation in five years from now?

As we move through January, there is the opportunity to reset and intentionally decide how we want to work, live, and lead. Never has there been so much ground-breaking research in the areas of behavior science, neuroscience, and psychology to support a reset. Some of my favorites include the work of Harvard Medical Doctor Susan David, Wharton Professor Katy Milkman, and CEO Whitney Johnson. I hope you find their work and research helpful as well.

I wish you the very best for 2022.

Maureen