The Coaches’ View

This is the third installment contributed by Coach Doug Silsbee.  The following is adapted from Presence-Based Coaching, Doug’s new book coming this Fall.

One of the best ways to become more present as a leader is to bring your attention into your body. Centering is one way to do this.

I have clients who center when entering their classroom of six-year-olds, leading meetings of people who manage nine figure budgets, and conducting difficult performance reviews. Centering is a core practice for being more present.

A simple version of centering is to observe your posture and your breath. First, re-organize the way you’re holding your body, sensing how you’re supported by gravity. Feel the floor under your feet, and the seat under your rear. Rock first self and right, then front and back, finding the place in the center that feels balanced and straight. Allow your shoulders to drop. Let your jaw relax; allow your eyes to be soft. Straighten your neck on your shoulders, and let your chest open.

Now, notice the sensation of coolness at the tip of your nose as air moves in and out. Notice your chest moving up and down. Sense your abdomen filling and relaxing with each breath. Let your attention be in your belly.

Notice your sense of yourself now. How is it different than before? In this state, how might you interact with others differently?

Experiment with this during the coming week. You can do this anywhere… in a meeting, on a train, in the car, during a conversation. Practice ten times a day, for a minute or two each time. See how your experience of your day is different.

This is the second installment contributed by Coach Doug Silsbee.  The following is adapted from Presence-Based Coaching, Doug’s new book coming this Fall.

I coached a “C” level executive once who was both brilliant and insecure. He was a razor sharp business strategist. However, when anyone questioned him, he interpreted it as lack of confidence in him, and instantly felt defensive and under-confident. This expressed itself as shortness and impatience with others, who understandably became reluctant to disagree or ask tough but important questions.

I invited him to self-observe. To write down, on a daily basis, situations in which this reaction was triggered in him. He paid attention to the nuances of his own experiences with this, becoming intimately familiar with how a rather unhelpful pattern arose. Over time, and with related practices, he became able to recognize when he was going into his habit, interrupt it, and replace it with a different behavior.

Through familiarity comes early recognition. When we are able to recognize an unhelpful habit arising, we can couple it with last week’s move (Stop!) and choose something different!

Choose some habit that you tend to do, and that makes you less effective than you’d like to be. Could be interrupting. Could be giving unsolicited advice. Could be jumping in too fast to care-take others.

Now, observe that habit on a daily basis. Don’t try to change it, or eliminate the habit. Simply become familiar with it. When does this habit show up? What triggers it? What’s the earliest, most subtle sign that the habit is starting to kick in? Where in your body does the first hint of the habit originate? Write down, daily, a brief summary of these observations.

Doug Silsbee is an affiliate coach of The Pyramid Resource Group and will be releasing his second book from Jossey-Bass in the Fall of 2008.  The following is an excerpt from Presence-Based Coaching.  We will be posting each of Doug’s “Six Moves for Leadership Presence.”

The first move for leadership  presence is “Stop!” Anytime, we can stop the incessant flow of activity and thought in our lives to recognize, in the present moment, the possibility of choice.

Even though it is intellectually obvious that we can choose, most of the time we go through our daily activities without really considering the range of choices available to us. We are, most of us, far more habitual and automatic that we would like to think. We’re pre-occupied, going down the tracks of our current activity, thinking about the future or the past.

Stopping, in mid-stream, is the first step towards re-organizing ourselves around what’s important. It’s claiming a moment to make a conscious, unhurried choice about what we want to do or say. Deceptively simple, a “Stop!” is a move into greater self-awareness and pro-activity. It’s akin to your mother telling you to count to 10 before saying anything in anger!