There’s a number of great ways to get around these mental barriers:

Read more at my Workbloom blog»

But there’s a lot to be learned from the past.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

But I wanted to talk a bit about humor, lightness, and energy.  One of the things I worked hard on for those workshops was to create an environment which was significantly more upbeat than normal.  As an introvert, this is quite difficult for me to do, and it takes an unbelievable amount of energy.  But I’ve found that my clients are much more creative, and much more energized, when things are light.

I describe to people an image of you being in a head-to-head battle with your problem.  You push on the problem, and it pushes back, and ultimately it ends up as a battle of wills – like two sumo wrestlers.

Rather like having a teenager, sometimes.

But when you are able to have some humor and energy, this gives you the mental and emotional agility to dance around the problem and look at it from different points of view.  You become more resilient, and can see that few problems are truly insurmountable.

My purpose last week was to help people out of their current focus on the immediate problems, and instead to think more optimistically about the future and dance with it.  If you were at one of the workshops, I’d be interested to hear about how this worked for you.

Remember: When you’re struggling with a problem, start dancing.  Move laterally, with humor and grace, and it will help you see more creative solutions.

How much time and energy do I spend worrying about the future? I might lose my job. That next appointment with the doctor might not go well. We don’t know how the new US Health Care law will impact us personally.

Read the rest of this on my Workbloom blog»

Despite all that, I’ve been blessed with a great number of friends and supporters, a wonderful number of opportunities, and the love of my family.  If you’re going to lose your job and head off into a new career, it’s hard to ask for more.

Thank you.

Now let’s get to work on making 2010 a much better place!

Ten years I was employed in Hewlett-Packard, just beginning to discover this new emerging field called coaching.  I was managing a team that was embroiled in the whole Y2K issue, worried that all our hard preparation might not have been enough to ward off customer problems on January 1st.  As it turns out, things went remarkably well.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, we were captivated by all the celebrations taking place around the world.  We had CNN on TV nonstop for the entire day, and every hour was a new joy.  In the midst of industry growth and optimism – before the “high tech bubble” popped – all we had to look forward to was opportunity and excitement.

The industry downturn, and then 9/11/2001, changed our lives deeply: materially, mentally, spiritually.  We have a much different view of the world and our government now.  Other, more personal, events have become a part of my life and have sent me off on new journeys of discovery.

But it’s unbelievable to me that this decade has disappeared like a flash.  I still clearly recall the experience of “partying like it’s 1999.”  Is the next decade going to go even faster?

The focus is on crafting your Elevator Speech.  That’s the little 30-second spiel that you give to describe who you are, what you’re looking for, and how you might help someone else in the job context.  If you don’t have one – or several – I’d suggest that this can be one of the most valuable things you can do.  If nothing else, it clarifies in YOUR mind where you want to go.  As you might know, I’m also a big fan of the power of verbalizing your intentions as a means to help you push forward.

The problem with many elevator speeches is that they start out with “Here’s where I’ve come from….”  When you’ve just lost your job, often it’s a struggle to make that positive and give it energy.  How does this strike you?  “I’m an engineer who was just laid off after 25 years with XYZ Corp.”

That sucks all the life out of the rest of the speech.  At this point, as a listener, I’m so depressed that I don’t even want to hear what follows.

What I had these people do was to take their current Elevator Speech and deconstruct the words and phrases into three categories:

1. Referring to the past
2. Describing to the present
3. Projecting the future

Most people found that the bulk of their words talked about the past, about roles that they had performed.

My challenge to them was to change their way of thinking in these four steps:

1. Create an opening statement which ONLY talks about the future.  Dare to dream, sure.  Imagine that future contribution which will result in a feature article in the local newspaper.  Or the cover of a relevant magazine, if you dare.

2. Find a word or phrase which captures why you are excited about this future.  Ask yourself:  Why are you passionate about this?  What turns you on?  Why would it be so cool that you couldn’t possibly let the opportunity pass?

3. Capture some phrases which demonstrate where your experience came from to create this future.  What did you do, for whom, with what results?  Don’t mention anything that’s not relevant to your desired future.  Don’t limit yourself to work experience.

4. Describe your current state with some words which show how you took your past experiences, and now have the necessary skills and assets, to propel you toward your future.

This is actually a bit harder than it looks, so I’d challenge you to sit down and do this as an exercise.   You can get useful value in 15 minutes, but only if you’re taking it seriously and writing your ideas down.  As long as you just ponder the answers, they won’t be concrete enough for you to make progress.

Does this result in a newly written Elevator Speech?  Not necessarily.  The primary purpose is to open up your way of thinking, and to help generate some ideas and new energy.

Right now a lot of people are scared for their jobs.  As a result, I’ve observed that many are “hunkering down” in fear.  They’re not taking risks, they’re not being more creative, they’re just trying to work harder and wait out the storm.

But what we need in tough times is more creativity, not less.  This is where the role of leaders is critical:  They must support people in making changes.  And change is always risky.

But we don’t want everybody running off in random directions changing things at whim.  The net result of that is chaos.  Instead, a leader will set a narrow, powerful, and emotionally compelling strategic direction within which people are encouraged to innovate.

Why a narrow direction?  Because you want to increase the intensity of the result.  The narrower it is, the less energy you’ll waste on less-aligned alternatives.

Why powerful?  Because people need to see a reason to change.  Increasing a metric by 10% isn’t that powerful.  Saving the company, or becoming the industry leader, is incredibly powerful.

Why emotionally compelling?  Because we have to help our people to get over the hurdles which result from any change.  The potential future has to look SO much better than the current situation that it’s worth investing your personal energy and taking a risk.

THAT’s the way that the organization’s potential is unleashed:  By creating the context in which each individual wants to contribute their best, rather than just hunkering down and trying to be safe.