Ed Batista

A Week in Point Reyes

Every year Amy and I try to get up to Point Reyes, and at the end of June we spent a week at a cottage up on the ridge in Inverness.  We'd hike all day, pick up some amazing local produce (like Marin Sun Farms steaks), grill dinner on our back porch, and collapse, exhausted.  And then do it all over again the following day.

One of our favorite hikes up there is the Tomales Point Trail.  This stand of cypress is all that remains of the Lower Pierce Point Ranch, about 2/3 of the way from the trailhead to Tomales Bluff.  I always wonder what it was like to live here 120 years ago:

We made it all the way to the end (9.4 miles out and back), and it was so satisfying to rest on the hillside, eat a simple lunch of Molinari salami, bread and water, and watch the loons and pelicans and an occasional seal.  (Or sea lion--I never really know.) The yellow lupine that looks so charming in the background was out of control this year.  Chest-high and occasionally over our heads and sprawling across the last mile of the trail.

Later in the week we went out to Tomales Point again to hike down to McClure's Beach:

A great discovery this trip was the Estero Trail to Drake's Head (coincidentally, also 9.4 miles out and back.)  We saw 4 people in a full day of hiking, and 2 of them were in the last 1/4 mile.  (In addition to the cows scattered across this section of the park, we saw 2 coyotes, 2 mother deer with their fawns, scores of bat rays swimming in Drakes Estero, and a red dragonfly.)  From the top of Drake's Head, 150 feet above the Limantour Estero:

Another new destination was Marshall Beach.  You have to drive 2.5 miles of gravel road to reach the trailhead, and from there it's only a 1.5 mile hike down to the beach, but here's the view of Tomales Bay (the beach is nestled in among the pines at right):

As I learned last year, the four best happiness strategies for me are Increasing Flow Experiences, Taking Care of My Body, Practicing Acts of Kindness, and Expressing Gratitude.  Although hiking isn't always challenging enough to be a flow experience, there were certainly stretches on the longer days where I felt a sense of meditative peace.  It was a gloriously physical week, from the daily exertion to the deeply satisfying food.  And although we were kind only to ourselves, I am profoundly grateful for the experience.  (Thank you, Phil Burton.)

Cross-Cultural Communication: Individualism vs. Collectivism

How do cultural differences affect communications across a cultural divide?  Specifically, how does a culture's individual or collective orientation affect communications?

I've written before about the primary dimensions of cultural difference identified by Geert Hofstede.  One of the key dimensions is individualism vs. collectivism, which Hofstede defines as follows:

The degree to which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups.  On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The word 'collectivism' in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group, not to the state.

In Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini talk about the impact of this cultural dimension on communications:

People from collectivistic and individualistic cultures tend to differ in the relative weight they give to two central functions of communication.  In short, one function of communication is informational: When we communicate, we convey information to others.  A second, less obvious function of communication is relational: When we communicate, we help build and maintain relationships with others.  Although both functions are clearly important to people in all cultures, social psychologists Yuri Miyamoto and Norbert Schwarz argued that individualistic cultures place a greater emphasis on the informational function of communication, whereas collectivistic cultures place a greater emphasis on the relational function...

What do these findings say about influencing others within and outside the workplace?  As we discussed in previous chapters, relationships are a key component to the persuasion process--but this is especially true with people from countries with collectivistic orientations... These results suggest that, when dealing with people from collectivistic cultures, it is particularly important to attend to aspects of the relationship that the two of you share...

These findings also suggest that we should be especially vigilant about providing such feedback with people from collectivistic cultures, letting them know that we're attending to the relationship that we share with them as well as to the information they're trying to convey.

A point I'd add is that within any national culture, there are innumerable sub-cultures associated with different regions, industries and even organizations.  And these sub-cultures may differ substantially along the primary dimensions of cultural difference, including individualism vs. collectivism.  So even--and perhaps especially--when communicating with someone from your own country, it's worth taking some time to understand where they fall along this spectrum and tailoring your communication style accordingly.

(In addition to the research by Yuri Miyamoto and Norbert Schwarz in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology referenced above, Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini also cite the work of Ron Scollon and Suzanne Wong Scollon in Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach.)

Leading is Lonely and Other Thoughts

I recently rediscovered these lines in a notebook from 2007:

Leading is lonely.

Information-gathering is not decision-making.

Position power is not influence.

When I wrote them I had just begun working with a number of prospective leaders among my students at Stanford, and I was reflecting on my own leadership experiences, particularly the period just after graduation from business school.  At that time I went from reporting to an organization's leader (in my last job before school) to being a leader on my own, reporting directly to a Board of Directors, and these three lessons stand out among the many I learned the hard way.

Leading is lonely. Jan Masaoka, one of my founding Board members, warned me about the loneliness of leadership long before I actually felt it.  If you're a leader at the head of an organization, by definition you don't have internal peers who share your perspective.  Your Board of Directors isn't going to provide you with the developmental support you've enjoyed from previous mentors and managers--they're there to challenge you, not to nurture you.  And your family is going to get tired of hearing about the challenges you face long before you get tired of talking about them.  It's lonely.  So establish and maintain a support network that'll be there for you when things get tough.  Reach out to other leaders.  Create a personal Board of Directors.  (And/or do what I did and hire a coach!)

Information-gathering is not decision-making.  In my last job before business school one of my primary tasks was to gather information, analyze it and make recommendations to the organization's leader.  When I became a leader myself I continued this practice without fully understanding that it was no longer sufficient to allow me to move the organization forward.  The right answers to the questions I faced weren't going to emerge from the data, because there were no "right" answers.  The important questions I faced as a leader were sufficiently complex that no amount of data would ever be enough--I needed to rely on A) my judgment and B) my ability to execute.  But before I came to this realization I spent a lot of wasted time and effort amassing more and more data hoping that the "right" answer would emerge.  Rather than getting trapped in an information-gathering sinkhole, test your ability to get just enough data to allow you to exercise your judgment, and then execute your ass off to insure that the decision you made was the right one.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  (Honing your judgment is an iterative process!)

Position power is not influence.  The authority that comes with any leadership position always looks more substantial from the outside.  Once in the role, you realize how little you can accomplish by relying on position power, and how dependent you are on your ability to influence key stakeholders.  If I knew then what I know now about influence, no doubt I would have been a more effective leader.  But today I'd go even further and note that there's a wide range of influence strategies--9, according to the Hay Group--and the ones I tend to prefer aren't always the most effective in a given situation (and the ones I tend to avoid may be just what's called for.)

Photo by different2une. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Some Inspiration from Corey Ford

One of the great satisfactions of being a coach is the opportunity to work with some truly extraordinary people who are seeking to experience as much as possible in life and to fulfill every ounce of their potential.  Corey Ford, who's appeared here before, is one such person, and I enjoyed another thoughtful conversation with him yesterday.

I learned that back in March he'd been invited to give the keynote address at the annual banquet of the University of North Carolina's Morehead-Cain Scholars Program.  The program--whose motto is "Create an extraordinary life"--offers high-potential students a four-year scholarship at Chapel Hill and access to a wide range of academic and professional resources.  In his inspiring talk, Corey discusses how he made the most of this opportunity, and a few of his comments in particular stood out for me:

On becoming an entrepreneur: My Morehead-Cain experiences had allowed me to grow from a boy who energetically climbed the ladder placed before him to a man who started to build his own ladder.

On his decision to leave a high-profile job: I thought I was at the top.  I thought I would be there for the rest of my career, but I faced a choice: Stay and stagnate, or make my own way.

On exploration: We all have unwritten endings.  Life is a journey, but not a linear one.  Just like design, innovation and entrepreneurship, in life there are times to focus and times to flare, times to execute and times to explore.  Congratulations—it's time for you to explore.

Kudos, Corey--I know there are a lot of people at Stanford (and I'm sure at Chapel Hill) who are looking forward to hearing about the next steps in your own non-linear journey.

Self-Coaching Guides: Communication, Leadership, Motivation, Change, Learning and Happiness

Several students I worked with in the Leadership Coaching class at Stanford this year raised the question of how to "self-coach" after graduation--how to continue the process of personal development without the resources of a graduate program at their disposal.

Much of the writing I've done here over the past 5 years has been aimed at helping people do just that, so I've created a series of "Self-Coaching Guides"  on the topics of Communication, Leadership, Motivation, Change, Learning and Happiness.

I don't intend these brief guides to provide the definitive word on such expansive subjects, but hopefully they'll allow anyone with an interest in a given topic to do some focused reading and to learn more about the thinkers and resources I've found valuable.

(Note that the files linked to below are PDFs, which require Adobe reader, and they're fairly large, so access them over a fast connection.)

Self-Coaching Guide #1: Communication (PDF, 452 KB)

Self-Coaching Guide #2: Leadership (PDF, 301 KB)

Self-Coaching Guide #3: Motivation (PDF, 378 KB)

Self-Coaching Guide #4: Change (PDF, 397 KB)

Self-Coaching Guide #5: Learning (PDF, 564 KB)

Self-Coaching Guide #6: Happiness (PDF, 363 KB)

Photo by Nesher Guy.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Caregiving and Stress Management

The most important role in my life over the past month has been caregiver to my wife Amy, who had arthroscopic surgery in April and will have minimal use of her right arm for about six weeks in total.  The operation was needed was to repair a tear in her labrum, the ring of cartilage that surrounds the shoulder socket and keeps the arm stable in the joint.  (The handy graphic above is from Health.com's informative article on the subject, and "SLAP" stands for Superior Labrum Anterior to Posterior. )

It's an injury most commonly suffered by baseball pitchers and competitive swimmers, neither of which describes Amy.  We're not entirely sure how it happened in her case, but she had experienced increasing pain and decreasing range of motion in her shoulder for the past 2 years, and once the tear in her labrum was finally picked up on an MRI a few months ago, it was clear that surgery would be necessary.

We tried to choose the earliest possible date for the operation that wouldn't pose an impossible conflict with our respective work schedules, and we tried to think through in advance the implications of her being without the use of her arm for a month.  And over a month into the process, Amy's recovery is going well--but the experience has also been a lot more stressful than we anticipated.

To be fair, I've been much busier at work than I expected to be this Spring, and that's one of the main sources of my stress.  But being a caregiver is also simply harder and more time-consuming than I expected it to be, and that would be true no matter what was happening at work.

We've hardly found the solution to this problem, but we have found 3 key steps that helped us manage our stress over the past month:

Acknowledge the Stress

I'm completely dedicated to supporting Amy through this process--if a wife can't count on her husband to help her at a time like this, what good is he?  But playing the stoic and acting as though everything's fine--which I tried at first--wasn't sustainable and ultimately wasn't even helpful, because it increased the distance between us just when we needed to be closer.  At the same time, of course, Amy was deeply stressed not only by her physical symptoms but also by the experience of helplessness and dependence that accompanied the sudden loss of the use of her arm.  Even on days when things were going well, we had a lot of difficult emotions swirling around in the background.

So it was a great relief when we realized how stressed we both were and how helpful it was to talk about it with each other.  My stress didn't mean that I resented being her caregiver, and her stress didn't mean that my caregiving was inadequate--it simply was.  And we had to acknowledge it in order to be able to deal with it.

Take the Long View

The miracle of arthroscopic surgery--we walked into the ER at 6am and were home in time for lunch--fools us into thinking that the healing process will be equally speedy.  But it doesn't work that way, and the longer our time horizon, the more we realize that it's OK if we don't experience dramatic progress on a given day--and we may even take a step or two backwards.

We've also realized that our experience of living together is going to be different for an extended period of time.  In the past when one of us was sick and had to cope with some limitations and the other had to pick up some additional responsibilities, it was a brief hiccup in our domestic routines--but this is different.  For a few weeks Amy needed a lot of help simply getting bathed and dressed, and I had to plan the start of my day around those processes.  Today she's regained her independence in those areas, but there are still a lot of things she can't do, and those jobs are mine on an ongoing basis.  So rather than view the way things were before the surgery as normal, I've come to view normal as a definition in flux, and every few weeks it's going to change.  Being a cliche doesn't make it any less true: It's a marathon, not a sprint. 

Savor the Little Things

In retrospect perhaps it was good that two months ago I learned so much about what makes me happy by coming down with a terrible cold--because today I really appreciate a Martini, and exercise, and any opportunity to be outdoors.  On an even simpler level, I appreciate the experience of just being in physical contact with Amy as she recovers.  I shouldn't have been so surprised, but it was stunning to realize how much we depend on touch to express ourselves to each other and how much the pain that followed her surgery disrupted that process.  Each step forward in her recovery is another opportunity for us to re-establish that connection, and on the most difficult, stressful days over the past month, little things like that have been the most important.

Graphic from Health.com, © Healthwise, Incorporated.

Voltaire and Patton on Perfection

In Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique, he wrote, "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."  The best is the enemy of good, or, less literally, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

And Gen. George S. Patton is reputed to have said, "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan next week."

Two quotes I return to over and over again, in my work and every other aspect of life. In our search for perfection, how often we miss the opportunity to "violently execute" (or at least vigorously implement) a plan right now that would be more than good enough.

On Growth and Renewal

The photo at right was sent to me by Eric Lapp of Rutland, Vermont, who wrote in response to a post about my recent illness.  Eric took the photo in his neighborhood just a few weeks ago, and he notes that it...

...serves to remind me that in all these things (life, loss, health, jobs, etc.)-- "they" can cut down a strong tree in the yard for whatever reason, but new growth...will pop up and thrive and go on!

What a powerful metaphor--I find it inspiring and full of hope.  Thanks, Eric.

Today in San Francisco

Nearly as many boats in the Golden Gate as sunbathers on Ocean Beach, thanks to an unusually warm and cloudless day.  Not a bad day to be alive, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here.

Lessons from 1995

In the spring of 1995 my friend Robert Bengtson and I rode from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back, taking a week or so to make the trip.  I had been hit by a car while riding the previous summer, and this was my longest ride since recovering from the accident.  It was a unique chance for the two of us to travel together, and we made the most of it--I have so many great memories from that journey.

I was reminded of this trip a few weeks ago when some friends of Robert asked me to contribute to a book they were making him for his 40th birthday.  I dug out the photo above, which we took using a timer as we rested on the side of the road somewhere, scanned it and sent it to them, but the experience stuck in my mind, and I've continued to think about it.

I realized that my trip with Robert in 1995 served 3 key purposes: It was a way of demonstrating my full recovery from the earlier accident; it shifted my perspective and pushed me to grow; and it prepared me for a much longer journey up into Canada and across the American West that I was planning to take later that summer.

And 14 years later, as the memory of this trip is recalled for me by Robert's friends, I find that I've been coping with a surprisingly serious illness, I'm thinking extensively about the process of growth, and I encounter a cryptic message on a telephone pole: Some day you will.

So what do I make of all this?  Well, my only-half-joking conclusion is that the universe is encouraging me to do something that will assert my recovery, push me to grow and prepare me to take an even bigger step in the near future.  And just what is that something?  (I don't think it's a motorcycle trip this time.)