Ed Batista

Thank You, Stanford, and Goodbye!

Hoover Tower, July 2016

Begin with the End in Mind

At the end of 2006 I accepted an offer to join the first in-house coaching staff at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where I had completed my MBA six years before. I took on the role not because I aspired to a career in academia, but because I was excited about the opportunity to contribute to the launch of the school's new curriculum, with its emphasis on leadership development and experiential learning, and because I thought it could accelerate my own development as a coach. The results on both fronts exceeded my wildest expectations.

I maintained a full-time role at the GSB until 2016, when I resigned to devote more time to my private practice, although I continued to serve as a Lecturer teaching Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") and The Art of Self-Coaching, the course I had launched the year before. I resigned from the Interpersonal Dynamics faculty in 2017 after the school asked me to add a third section of The Art of Self-Coaching, as I could only be on campus one day a week, and until 2020 I taught my course year-round. It was routinely one of the school's highest-rated electives until the last time I taught it in 2021, and I learned a great deal from that experience. I took a break from Stanford entirely last year, in part to reflect on the role I wanted teaching to play in my life, and a few days ago I concluded that it was time to retire from the GSB.

Today I'm struck by the extent to which the courses and programs that were products of the "new curriculum" are now viewed as features of the landscape, as if they'd always been there. This is gratifying, but it also reminds me that it's time to move on before I, too, am viewed as a feature of the landscape. I'm also somewhat astonished to realize that I worked with well over 1,000 MBA students in more than 50 courses from 2007 to 2021. It's impossible to convey how much my work with them has meant to me, and how significantly it shaped my growth and development, not only as a coach, but also as a person.

I know it's time to end this chapter of my professional life, but I do so with some ambivalence. I took great pride in delivering excellence as a teacher, and I don't like ending on a disappointing note with my final group of students. I loved creating an environment in the classroom that invited students to have deeper conversations and take some meaningful risks in order to learn, and I'm not sure how I'll meet that need in the future. And this evolution in my relationship with Stanford is yet another in a series of post-pandemic transitions that evoke a loss of identity.

All that said, the time is surely right. The last few years have made it clear that coaching is a counter-cyclical profession--the worse the state of the world, the more leaders benefit from good coaching, and I've never felt more useful to my clients or more needed. The idea of relating to Stanford as an alumnus, with none of the responsibilities that faculty and staff must bear sounds appealing. And at this stage of my life I'm reflecting on and writing about issues more relevant to senior leaders than to graduate students: coping with midlife malaise, evolving from warrior to sage, leading other senior leaders.

It's impossible to summarize my relationship with Stanford in a single essay, but I can recount half-a-dozen stories from the last few decades that provide a little color...

1. A Lesson in Humility

I arrived at Stanford as an MBA student in 1998--a quarter-century ago!--but my relationship with the university began in 1985, when I was a senior in high school. I was a bit lackadaisical about the college admissions process--the fact that high school was ending came as something of a surprise to me--and I discovered that I'd missed the application deadline for Brown, which had been my first choice, to the extent that I was making a choice at all.

I never considered the other Ivies, which seemed out of reach or a poor fit for me (or both), so I set my sights on Stanford, which I envisioned as both more achievable and more offbeat. I didn't feel arrogant about it, but I was confident I'd get in--and then a thin envelope arrived in the mail, informing me that my presence in California would not be required. It was the first of many useful lessons Stanford would teach me.

I ultimately graduated from Brown, via a long and winding path, but I keenly remembered Stanford's rejection, which served as a useful chip on my shoulder and source of motivation when I decided to apply to the Graduate School of Business to pursue an MBA. At the time I was passionate about helping nonprofits and NGOs use technology more effectively, and entrepreneur Jed Emerson and Stanford alumna Melinda Tuan helped me realize that the GSB would be the best place to pursue my vision. So it was very fulfilling when I got the call from the GSB's Director of Admissions Marie Mookini that I'd been accepted as a member of the Class of 2000.

2. Let's Talk About That

After graduation I spent the next six years pursuing the vision that had initially led me to business school, primarily as the first executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, aka N-TEN. I was determined to make N-TEN a success, and I threw myself into the experience with vigor, which resulted in some predictable conflicts. Vince Stehle, a member of my board, took me aside and said, in effect, "You're a talented guy, but you have some rough edges. I advise you to invest in yourself and get a coach." I turned to Mary Ann Huckabay, with whom I'd taken Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") as an MBA student and asked if she'd take me on as a coaching client. (Thankfully she said yes, and she's still my coach today.)

When I began exploring coaching as a career path in 2005, I considered applying to the GSB's Group Facilitation Training Program, which prepared community members to lead student groups in Touchy Feely. I participated in a group co-facilitated by Barbara Brewer and Dietmar Brinkmann to refresh my memory of the experience, and I got a lot more than I bargained for. Most significantly, I came to the realization that to give myself the greatest chance of succeeding as a coach I needed to quit my job and dedicate myself entirely to my practice--which I did. But for the first time I also grasped just how much growth would be required of me if I were to pursue this path.

With Mary Ann's encouragement I applied to the training program, and one step in the process was an interview with a current facilitator. The night before my interview Amy had to go to the emergency room, and the hospital kept her for observation. Amy insisted that I keep the appointment, and I arrived on campus feeling anxious and distracted. My interviewer was Tony Levitan, a GSB alumnus, and as we got started he noticed that something was amiss and asked me how I was doing. I answered candidly, saying something like "Not great," and Tony did something that I'll never forget: He said, "Well, let's talk about that." So we did--which, of course, turned about to be the most relevant type of "interview" for the program.

3. Too Big to Fail (Or So I Thought)

The Executive Challenge is a role-playing case competition that serves as the culmination of the first-year Leadership Labs course. I served as an alumni judge in a pilot version of the EC in 2007, and later that year my colleagues and I on the Leadership Coaching staff had to decide what to do with the event now that "LeadLabs" was becoming a mandatory component of the core curriculum. I recall a meeting with Evelyn Williams, the faculty member who had developed the original version of LeadLabs and the Fellows program at the University of Chicago's business school and had been recruited to bring it to the GSB by Dean Bob Joss.

At Chicago participation in the EC had been a reward for high-performing students, but I advocated for expanding it to include all students. If we kept it small, it would be our responsibility alone--and we were already struggling to command the resources necessary to make LeadLabs a success. But if the whole school was involved more people would feel a sense of ownership, and the EC would be "too big to fail." The final decision was Evelyn's, but I take a little credit for influencing the outcome, and today the entire MBA1 class participates in the EC, along with 70+ MBA2 Leadership Fellows and hundreds of alumni judges. (It's the second-largest event at the GSB behind graduation.)

This set the stage, however, for a great embarrassment and another profound lesson. From 2008 through 2015 I ran the scoring system for the EC, and it evolved into a finely-tuned machine that managed to process an immense amount of data throughout the day, carefully check the results, and deliver the final scores in time to be announced at a massive party held at the conclusion of the competition. But in 2014 an oversight on my part resulted in an error, which meant that several teams were awarded a victory that had to be renounced, and the real victors were denied the opportunity to celebrate with their classmates.

The cause of the error was a tiny technical glitch, and when I discovered what had happened I realized that it would be easy to evade responsibility. No one would have faulted me if I'd shrugged my shoulders and blamed the fates. But I decided that if I took pride in the system's previous successes--and I did--I had to claim this failure as my own. I reached out to the students who had been affected and apologized, and I received a host of gracious responses in return. I also wrote to the staff who had been assisting me, making it clear that I held myself responsible, and their supervisor, Ursula Kaiser, replied, "Thanks for the clarification, Ed. I appreciate your sense of accountability and honesty. You are a true gentleman." I don't always live up to that, but it's something to shoot for.

4. A Role Play for Real

In the summer of 2010 I was invited by Carole Robin to co-facilitate a group with her in the GSB's week-long version of Touchy Feely for executives, a program that would be overseen by David Bradford. I owe both Carole and David an immense debt for their many contributions to my career, including this experience, which was a high-profile opportunity for a relatively junior facilitator like myself. Much like the MBA version of the course, the program included large-group sessions before each group during which a faculty member would lecture or conduct an exercise that all 36 participants would observe. One such exercise was a role-play involving feedback between a faculty member and one of the facilitators, and it was agreed that David and I would team up for it.

Unbeknownst to David, I had felt an increasing sense of irritation with him as the week progressed. He had made a few joking comments that highlighted my junior status on the staff, and although in hindsight it was merely a form of friendly teasing, at the time I felt sensitive about my relative inexperience and resented these remarks. Without providing David any advance warning, I decided to make this dynamic the focus of our exercise--rather than conduct a "role-play," I would simply be myself and provide him with some direct feedback for real.

I don't recall what I said, but I recall vividly how it felt. David and I were seated in front of the room, with all of the participants and the rest of the staff arrayed in front of us. Somehow I conveyed to David that I wasn't role-playing, I was speaking from the heart, I was truly frustrated and upset, and I had some real feedback for him. Everyone in the room suddenly realized what they were witnessing, and it became very still and quiet.

From my vantage point today, I'm both embarrassed by this episode and proud of it. I'm embarrassed because it was clearly an effort to gain an unfair advantage over David by surprising him with this feedback in a public setting. And yet I'm proud of it because it was also a legitimate attempt to "walk our talk" as facilitators, to illustrate the concepts we were teaching not through a simulated experience but a real one.

David, to his immense credit, responded in the moment with grace and compassion, dissolving my frustration and providing our participants with a powerful example of how a leader could respond effectively to critical feedback from a subordinate, even--and especially--when it was an unwelcome surprise. After the conclusion of the large-group session, Carole and I joined our group in our breakout room. One of our group's members was a hardened military veteran, and throughout the week he had been skeptical about the experience and what he might learn from it, but as our group session began, he expressed how my interaction with David had earned his respect. He saw that we took our business as seriously as he took his, and he was going to put his skepticism aside.

5. On the Big Stage

From 2017 through 2020 I taught The Art of Self Coaching, the course that I founded in 2015, three times a year, in Autumn, Winter and Spring Quarters. While it was rewarding to work with so many students--over 100 members of each graduating class--by the end of each academic year I needed a break from Stanford. In 2017 and 2018 I was invited by the Second Year students to give a "Last Lecture," a talk on any topic I chose that would be held in the GSB's largest auditorium the week before their graduation.

It was an honor to be invited, but it also felt like a lot of work at a moment when I was ready to take a break, so I declined as graciously as I could. That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth--I was also anxious about the prospect of speaking in front of hundreds of people. I'm not a natural public speaker, and I've had to work hard to feel comfortable at the front of a room. The most helpful step in that process was taking a public speaking course at the Engineering School while I was an MBA student myself, but I still get butterflies even today.

In 2019 I anticipated being invited to speak for a third time--and having to decline a third time--when something interesting happened: The expected invitation never came...and I was disappointed. I realized that I enjoyed being asked, and when you keep saying "No" eventually people stop asking. Then, out of the blue, the invitation finally arrived, and it was clear that this time I had to say "Yes." So I did.

I knew what I wanted to discuss, and expanding that theme into a full lecture was relatively easy. But I was still anxious at the prospect of appearing on the big stage, so I went back to what I learned in that public-speaking course decades earlier--practice. I recorded myself giving the talk in my office, and that helped, but the best preparation was a bit more esoteric. The day before the lecture I drove all the way out to Chimney Rock, at the very tip of Point Reyes, and I gave my talk to the Pacific Ocean. The vastness of the sea was calming, perhaps because it put everything in perspective. If it went well, if it didn't go well, what would really change? (It went well.)

6. Bookends

Although I ended my GSB career teaching The Art of Self-Coaching virtually as a result of the pandemic--the first time was a big success, the second not so much--the course itself and my philosophy as an experiential educator were built around the in-person classroom experience, which is reflected in two activities that served as bookends for the course. I designed The Art of Self-Coaching to be an accelerated and economical journey. In a given quarter we had just nine or ten class sessions, each 1 hour, 45 minutes, which was less time than the other courses I'd been involved in over the years. I was confident that in the right conditions students could still have a deeply meaningful experience, but we had to get off to a fast start.

So before each quarter I memorized every student's face so that I could greet them by name as they walked into the classroom for the first time. There's no trick to the memorization process--it just takes time and effort--and it inevitably had an outsized impact. Occasionally students would even laugh in amazement. My goal was to send two messages: First, I'm setting a high standard for myself, and I hope you'll join me. But also, I see you--you're not just one of 36 students to me, you're an individual.

And in the final class session there was an exercise that invariably provided some of my best moments as a teacher. An ongoing theme in the course was what I really meant by "self-coaching." I provided a simple definition in the syllabus: "The process of guiding our own growth and development, particularly through periods of transition, in all domains of life." But this was intentionally vague and abstract, and by the final class I expected each student to have determined what self-coaching meant to them as an individual, and what it would look like in practice in their life.

I began the final class session with a warm-up exercise to get everyone moving and energized, and then I had them work on whiteboards in small groups, creating mindmaps that answered the question, "What is self-coaching to me?" The students would sketch out their mindmaps in silence and then discuss the results in their group. After the small group discussions we would conduct several more full-class activities, including some final remarks from me and a ritual to close the class. I enjoyed the entire session immensely, but it was particularly rewarding to observe my students as they discussed their mindmaps. Many of these conversations were quite animated, and there was a palpable sense of energy in the room. My persona as teacher was generally "circus ringmaster," so it's unexpected to realize that my most lasting memory of the classroom will be those times when I sat in the back and merely observed.

Many Thanks...

So to my former students: It was an honor to work with you, and I hope our time together continues to bear fruit in your current endeavors. Thank you, good luck, and keep in touch.

Over the course of my career at Stanford--as an MBA student myself, and later as a Leadership Coach and Lecturer, I was blessed with so many people who provided support and encouragement. I'm certain that I've inadvertently left some people off this list, and I apologize in advance for those oversights. That said, many thanks to...

Allison Rouse, Amy Kraus, Anamaria Nino-Murcia, Andrea Corney, Agnes Le, Anthony Ramsey, Barbara Brewer, Barbara Firpo, Bob Joss, Bob Sutton, Bonnie Wentworth, Bri' Godfrey,  Brian Lowery, Bryan McCann, Carrie Lee, Chevalisa Bruzzone, Chris McCanna, Chris Sadlak, Christopher Williams, Collins Dobbs, Courtney Payne, Delilah Gallardo, Dietmar Brinkmann, Dikla Carmel-Hurwitz, Domenico Anatrone, the late Don Flaxman, Don Hejna, Erica Peng, Grace Yokoi, Graham Veth, Graham Weaver, Hugh Keelan, Inbal Demri Shaham, Ingrid McGovert, James VanHorne, Jamila Rufaro, Jana Basili, Jed Emerson, Jeff Pfeffer, Jimena Galfaso, Joe Murphy, Joel Peterson, John Cronkite, John Johnson, Johnnie Walton, Joy Hsu, Karin Scholz Grace, Ken Chan, Kevin Martin, Kirstin Moss, Kris Becker, Lara Tiedens, Lela Djakovic, Leslie Chin, Lily Kimbal, Ling Lam, Lisa Kay Solomon, Lisa Radloff, Lisa Schwallie, Lisa Simpson, Lisa Stefanac, Liselotte Zvacek, Lynn Santopietro, Margee Hayes, Mark Voorsanger, Melinda Tuan, Michael Terrell, Mike Hochleutner, Mindy Williams, Nancy Dam, Nirit Hazan, Nonna Kocharyan, Nora Richardson, Paul Abad, Paul Roberts, Rebecca Taylor, Rebecca Zucker, Rich Kass, Richard Francisco, Richard Haukom, Ricki Frankel, Roberto Fernandez, Saraswathi Ram Mohan, Sharon Richmond, Stephanie Stevens, Sunny Sabbini, Sue Neville, Suzan Jensen, Tony Levitan, Tuquynh Tran, Ursula Kaiser, Vince Stehle, Yifat Sharabi-Levine, and Zoe Dunning.

More specifically...

Thank you, Carole Robin, for your invaluable guidance, your commitment to excellence, and your ongoing friendship.

Thank you, David Bradford, for your unfailing candor and your lifelong stewardship.

Thank you, Evelyn Williams, for your passion for leadership development, your genius for curriculum design, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

Thank you, Garth Saloner, for your rigor as a teacher and your foresight as a leader.

Thank you, Gary Dexter, for being yourself in the classroom, which emboldened me to do the same.

Thank you, Marie Mookini, for taking a chance on me.

Thank you, Mary Ann Huckabay, for being the single biggest influence on my life outside my family.

Thank you, Paul Mattish, for your unfailing professionalism in the face of utter chaos.

Thank you, Roberto Fernandez, for all you taught me and for being my greatest role model as a teacher.

Thank you, Sarah Stone, for being a beacon of clarity in the confusing life of a Lecturer.

Thank you, Scott Bristol, for your intellectual innovation and your heartfelt compassion.

 

Thank you!

My Appearance with John Baldoni

My colleague John Baldoni is a highly experienced coach, a great ambassador for the field, an inspiring writer, and a generous champion of the work of others, so I was truly delighted to join him on Grace Under Pressure. Our 30-minute live interview was recorded and is available via YouTube or the following podcast platforms:

• Apple
• Amazon
• Spotify

In addition to thanking John for the invitation, I want to thank the many teachers and mentors who made it possible for me to pursue coaching as a career, including Mary Ann Huckabay, Carole Robin, and Scott Bristol, who I mention in our interview. There are too many others to name, but I will always be in their debt.

My Appearance on the Re:Considering Podcast

I'm occasionally asked to appear on a podcast, and with the exception of my old friend and Stanford GSB classmate Agnes Le's "Leading Edge Lab" last year--see below--I've always declined. But Meredith Black, Bob Baxley and Aarron Walter recently invited me to join them on Re:Considering, and I'm glad I said yes. Not only was I was honored to follow in the footsteps of three authors who've had a big influence on my own work--Brad Stulberg, Kieran Setiya, and Oliver Burkeman--but I also had a lot of fun :-)

• Re:Considering, July 19, 2022
• Leading Edge Lab, Part 1, September 10, 2021 (with Agnes Le and Celine Teoh)
• Leading Edge Lab, Part 2, October 14, 2021 (with Agnes Le and Celine Teoh)

Work with Whatever Shows Up

Among my most important developmental experiences was the more than 1,500 hours I spent in T-groups, the experiential learning methodology developed by pioneering social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the late 1940s and deployed at Stanford (among many other places) in the 1960s. And one of the most valuable lessons I learned in that setting was: Work with whatever shows up.

Whoever shows up--that's the group. Don’t worry about who's not there--focus on who is there. Whatever anyone needs to talk about, that's the agenda. Don’t worry about what you're "supposed to" discuss--focus on what is being discussed. Whatever happens is what's happening. Don’t worry about what "should" or "shouldn't" happen--focus on what is happening. Work with whatever shows up.

Although I've always identified primarily as an executive coach who works one-on-one with leaders, I spent so much time as a T-group facilitator not only because I enjoyed it and found it meaningful (although I did, immensely), but also because it made me a better coach. Having a candid, potentially fraught interaction with someone while the other 12 members of the group observed or joined in gave me much more confidence that I could handle any challenging issues that might come up in a one-on-one coaching session. And the tremendous variability of what 14 people might come up with in a given group left me prepared for anything that might happen with a coaching client.

All of that was excellent preparation for a coaching session yesterday. My client and I were talking by phone while he was on a walk in downtown San Francisco. About two-thirds of the way through the call I heard some shouting, my client suddenly stopped talking, and then there was a series of unintelligible noises. It became clear to me that something was happening to my client--an incident of some sort--although I had no idea what was going on.

Finally, after what seemed like ages but must have been less than a minute, my client returned to the line, recovering his breath. A homeless man, possibly mentally ill, had fixated on my client, screamed at him, and chased him, seemingly intent on causing harm. My client was able to elude him and get to safety, but it had been a shock.

There was a temptation in that moment that we both felt to "resume" our conversation, as if we had been "interrupted." And yet that struck me as precisely the wrong thing to do. Instead of trying (or pretending) to ignore what just happened, it seemed important to do the opposite: Notice it, acknowledge it, integrate it into our conversation. We did, and we found that rather than distracting us from the topic at hand, our discussion of what had happened contributed to an even deeper understanding.

A simple lesson, one I've learned many times before, but worth repeating, as it's so easy to forget in the heat of the moment: Work with whatever shows up.

Getting Coaching for Your Team

It's common for a leader I'm working with to consider professional coaching for one or more of their employees, and I've explored this topic with clients many times over the years. (In my practice this typically involves a CEO and their executive team, but the issues discussed here are relevant for leaders at all levels of an organization.) In some cases this is simply because my client has found our work together valuable, and they believe that their employees could benefit from a similar relationship. In others they envision coaching as a means by which a specific employee could make the most of their potential or overcome a particular challenge.

While I believe that leaders should be able to coach as part of their repertoire [1], there are limits on the efficacy of coaching as a managerial tool. As I've noted before, "We invest in people, and being invested in someone means we care about them and want them to succeed... But if we invest in people, we're attached to outcomes. We want something specific to happen." [2] Good leaders find the right balance between investment and attachment, and as a result their employees feel like valued partners, not means to an end. But even when leaders strike that balance, there are inevitably gaps between the organization's goals and individual employees' interests and aspirations. This is where a professional coach can play a particularly helpful role as a third party, because in most circumstances the coach is unattached to any particular outcomes for the organization or the individual.

If you're thinking about recommending coaching for your employees, here are a number of issues to consider that can affect the extent to which they embrace coaching as a source of support:

What Coaching Is (and Isn't)

In an increasing number of industries and geographies coaching is viewed as a source of support routinely utilized by conscientious professionals, or even as a special benefit for high performers. But in some organizations and places coaching still carries a stigma, which often derives from outdated models or fundamental misunderstandings. In years past it wasn't unusual for coaching to focus on corrective measures for poor performers, but these days those types of engagements are less common. A formative text in my own development as a coach was Co-Active Coaching, written by the founders of the Coaches Training Institute (now the Co-Active Training Institute). As they note in the Second Edition, "From the...coach's point of view, nothing is wrong or broken, and there is no need to fix the client." [3]

This doesn't mean that coaching avoids difficult or even painful issues--in my practice it's not unusual for a client to initiate coaching after encountering a setback or receiving some critical feedback. But even in those cases that's usually just one of several factors that led them to consider coaching in the first place. And while coaching can and should result in a range of improvements from the client's perspective in areas related to their professional performance, I don't believe coaching is particularly effective as part of a formal "performance improvement plan." Many PIPs are merely preliminaries to a foregone conclusion, and in those circumstances it's difficult for coach and client to develop a trusting relationship. (And I've never taken on a client in which coaching was viewed by the organization as a last-ditch effort before termination.)

Coaching can also be confused with therapy, which reflects a misunderstanding of both disciplines. [4] The distinction is often less about the topics being addressed and more about the degree of severity. For example, I regularly talk with clients about anxiety, a common experience for leaders facing daunting responsibilities. [5] Everyone is subject to anxiety at times, and coaching can be helpful in managing it at moderate levels. But severe anxiety (e.g. lasting for an extended period of time, pervasive across many domains of life, impeding normal functioning, accompanied by other physical or cognitive symptoms) requires treatment by a trained mental health professional, not a coach.

The key is ensuring that your employees view coaching as a desirable source of support and not as a threat to their status, security or sense of esteem. Skillful coaches will take great care to address this from the start of every engagement. As longtime MIT professor Edgar Schein notes in Helping, another of my primary texts, "The focus of the earliest interactions between the client and the helper must be managed by the helper toward building up the client's status and identifying appropriate roles." [6] But this process begins the moment you first mention coaching to an employee--and optimally you're able to share with them your own experiences with coaching, past or present.

Agency and Choice

It's essential that employees feel sufficient agency and choice in this process. While in some circumstances it may feel tempting to make coaching mandatory, such an approach will likely undermine the process and may doom it to failure. An employee who feels required to work with a coach will be slow to develop a sense of trust and may never be willing to speak candidly. That said, it's entirely appropriate for you to indicate that there are problems with the status quo that coaching could address.

My initial exposure to coaching came as a client in my first leadership role after business school. At the time I was entangled in a series of conflicts with my Board of Directors. A member of the Board who became a mentor took me aside and said, "You're a talented guy, but you have some rough edges, and you're turning potential allies into adversaries. I advise you to invest in yourself and get a coach." This recommendation wasn't made in a threatening way, but it was made clear that my current trajectory could have negative consequences, that I was facing an important opportunity to become a better leader, and that I was being invited to step up to the challenge. (I did, and this decision to seek coaching ultimately led me to begin coaching others in 2005 and launch a full-time practice the following year.)

Similarly, it's preferable to allow employees to choose their own coach, although there are some caveats. In some cases you may want a single coach to work with an entire group of employees, either one-on-one or in a team coaching capacity. (See below.) Your organization may already have a relationship with a coaching firm or a group of coaches (although even then the coaching providers will typically have individual employees choose from among several potential coaches.) Your employees should have a sense of ownership and responsibility so that coaching is not something "happening to them," but, rather, a process in which they're active participants.

The Leader's Agenda

As noted above, in some cases you may want an employee to address a specific set of issues in coaching. But even when you simply view coaching as a source of support that will benefit an  employee in a generalized way, you likely have a variety of hopes and aspirations for the process. Your agenda shouldn't predominate, and you may need to rein in your directive impulses, but it's neither realistic nor helpful to pretend that you have no agenda at all. Instead, you, your employee and the coach need to collaborate to ensure that your interest in coaching is understood by both employee and coach, and, where possible, integrated into the coaching process without preventing the employee from focusing on other issues that are meaningful to them.

There are a number of ways to accomplish these goals. It's imperative to respect the confidentiality of the coaching relationship, but that doesn't mean you have no access to the coach. You will need to accept limits on what the coach will share with you, and the coach may want to limit the information that you share with them. [7] But you can meet with the coach at the beginning of the engagement in order to convey your agenda and at various times throughout the engagement to assess progress. You may want to include your employee in these meetings, and at times you may want to meet separately with the coach--although if the employee isn't present they should be aware that the meeting is taking place.

You can also discuss coaching with your employee in your regular one-on-ones, although I'm in agreement with the late Intel CEO Andy Grove: "A key point about a one-on-one. It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by [the employee]." [8] If you try to compel transparency, your employee may actually feel less willing to be open with you. But coaching need not be a black box, and you can express your interest in hearing more about the process and extend an invitation to be more candid by being more candid yourself. Once again, it's optimal to be able to talk about your own experience with coaching, which normalizes the idea of having a coach and makes it a safer conversation for your employee.

Think Systemically

It's not necessary for all members of a team to have a coach, and coaching shouldn't be made mandatory. But if coaching is perceived as a perk rather than a punishment, once a member of the team has a positive experience with a coach it's likely that others will want the same access. So consider the implications for your team as a system--including the possibility that everyone might want to participate--and what model for the program will best meet your team's needs. Here are four potential options:

1. In the most basic model each member of the team who wants coaching has their own coach with whom they meet individually, and the coaches have no other exposure to each other or to the group as a whole. This maximizes confidentiality and makes it easier for employees to decide when to begin or conclude coaching, but it requires your organization to maintain relationships with multiple coaches. In a variation of this model coaches may work with multiple employees in separate, parallel individual engagements--this allows you to work with fewer coaches, but it heightens the need for trust among those team members who share a coach. (In these situations it's preferable that employees know who each coach is working with, as that may influence their choice of coach.)

2. In another model the leader and each employee works individually with a coach (and coaches may or may not work with multiple individuals), but in addition the coaches meet separately to share information on the team's overall progress. Such engagements typically focus on group dynamics and interpersonal issues and are often relatively short, lasting just several months. Further, this arrangement is usually only feasible with a group of coaches from a single firm--it's difficult to organize this sort of collaboration when the coaches are independent providers.

3. In a third model each employee has their own coach, but there's also a coach who works with the group as a whole--this coach may also work individually with the leader, but not necessarily. The "team coach" can facilitate offsites and other special events, conduct 360s or other assessments [9], or shadow the group during regular meetings and offer guidance based on their observations.

4. And in yet another model a single coach works with members of the team individually and with the group as a whole. This requires not only a coach who's equally skilled in these disciplines, but also a high degree of trust among the team. When friction among team members is one of the motivations to initiate these activities, it's vital to initially establish a requisite degree of trust, psychological safety and emotional intimacy to serve as the foundation for subsequent work. [10]

Each of these models has its benefits and its disadvantages--there's no one right way to provide coaching for a team, and there are certainly additional models beyond these four. Think about your needs as a system, as well as the capabilities of the coaches available to you. Coaching is an idiosyncratic profession, and every provider has their own approach to the process, whether they're a consolidated firm, a platform that aggregates independent coaches, or a sole practitioner like myself. You should expect providers to have clarity on their approach and to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses relative to your needs. It's not helpful when you ask a coach, "What do you do?" and their first response is, "What do you need?"

 

This is a companion piece to How to Find (and Choose) a Coach.

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Footnotes

[1] How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize

[2] Investment vs. Attachment

[3] Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success, page 4 (Laura Whitworth, Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House and Phillip Sandahl, 2007)

[4] Therapy Referrals

[5] Attention Surplus Disorder (Anxiety and Distraction)

[6] Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help, page 46 (Edgar Schein, 2011)

[7] The corollary to confidentiality is a duty to disclose, which I define in my practice as follows: "My primary obligation is to each individual client, and I have a duty to disclose to each client any information that I believe they would view as material. This includes any information shared with me by a client's employees, employers, colleagues, board members, investors, friends, or family.  As a consequence, I cannot maintain confidentiality with any other party if doing so would prevent me from sharing material information with a client."

[8] High Output Management, page 75 (Andy Grove, 1983 / 1995)

[9] For more on 360s, see The Problem with Anonymous Feedback.

[10] For more on these qualities in organizational life, see Safety, Trust, Intimacy and Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination.

Photo by Angelo Juan Ramos.

Inflicting Help

@edbatista I usually refer to the failure to do so as "inflicting help"

— Tobbe Gyllebring (@drunkcod) March 4, 2013

What are the various ways we can, with the best of intentions, inflict help?

The Right Help at the Wrong Time

For help to truly be helpful, the recipients must be ready for it, and as would-be helpers we need to assess their readiness accurately. It's easy to misread potential openness for an actual invitation, so it's essential to bear in mind that help is helpful when it's asked for.

The Right Help, But Too Much Of It

Alternatively, we can offer help and have it received with gratitude, but we may not know when to stop. The desire to help takes over, and we pass the point of diminishing returns and keep on going. As helpers we need to be keenly attuned to recipients' ability to make effective use of our help and to stop helping when it's no longer helpful. [1]

The Wrong Help

Someone wants our help, and we’re able to offer it at the right time, but as the situation evolves it becomes clear that what we’re offering isn’t actually what’s needed. As helpers we may think we know what’s needed, but even--and perhaps especially--when we’re viewed as experts we need to access our ignorance and be open to the possibility that we may be wrong. [2]

What motivates all this unhelpful help? Why do we step in when it’s not necessarily helpful? Two factors explain this dilemma and also suggest potential solutions:

The Relationship, and Our Role In It

In many cases the motive to inflict help is a function of the relationship, or, rather, our interpretation of our role in that relationship. If there’s a difference in status within the relationship, such as between a manager and an employee, in the senior role we may feel that our primary function is to offer help. But when we find ourselves repeatedly inflicting help, we need to step back and question how we’re interpreting our role in that relationship.

Perhaps we're fulfilling the role in an outdated way that no longer reflects the state of the relationship or the capabilities of the other party. Perhaps we're applying a set of archetypes to the relationship--such as expert/novice or guide/follower--that no longer fit (or never did). While the desire to be of service is laudable, we need to check our assumptions about how and when we can best be of service in this particular role.

Emotion Regulation

It's essential to understand and regulate the emotions that underlie our helping impulse. Logical analysis can influence our behavior, but our actions inevitably have an emotional dimension, although at times these feelings may lie just beyond our conscious awareness. Comprehending the emotions that motivate our desire to help can allow us to sense when they’re causing us to inflict help, slow down our reflexive helping responses, and create opportunities to make different choices. [3]

We're driven to diminish our negative emotions and enhance our positive emotions, and helping relationships can trigger powerful feelings on both sides. When we feel the need to help we perceive a problem that we want to alleviate, and its persistence can trigger discomfort, anxiety, anger, and fear. The task here is to gain a greater sense of comfort with our discomfort, to simply notice these feelings and sit with them without being compelled to take action in order to soothe ourselves.

On the other side of the emotional spectrum, when we feel the need to help we perceive an opportunity to distinguish ourselves while being of service, and this can trigger excitement, enthusiasm, and even joy. The task here is to calm ourselves in the face of these stimulating emotions, to simply notice these feelings and, again, sit with them without being compelled to take action to maintain this pleasurable state.

As colleagues, friends and family members, we're asked to help in almost every sphere of life. Leaders and those of us in the helping professions may have even chosen our career path because it allows us to respond to such requests on a consistent basis. But being mindful of the difference between providing help and inflicting it is what allows us to truly make a difference.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Stop Providing Too Much Information

[2] Ignorance, Embarrassment and the Power of Not Knowing

[3] The Tyranny of Feelings

 

For Further Reading

Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)

This is a revised version of an earlier post.

How to Use a Knife (On Being Fierce)

You're like a dull knife, just ain't cutting.

You're just talking loud, and saying nothing.

~James Brown [1]

Developer and entrepreneur Paul Graham recently posted an essay entitled "Fierce Nerds":

The fierce nerds are a small but interesting group. They are as a rule extremely competitive — more competitive, I'd say, than highly competitive non-nerds... Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially when young... Another quality you find in most fierce nerds is intelligence. Not all nerds are smart, but the fierce ones are always at least moderately so. If they weren't, they wouldn't have the confidence to be fierce. [2]

Most of my clients are founder/CEOs with a technical background. I don't know that they would identify as "fierce nerds," but they're certainly very competitive, confident, and intelligent, so I'm familiar with the type and experienced in working with them. Having described this type, Graham then offers readers who do identify as fierce nerds some advice:

I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that your fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult problems... The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intellectual playground bully... How do you avoid this fate? Work on ambitious projects...

Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something like that. Maybe that's the right answer for some people. I have no idea. But it doesn't seem the optimal solution to me. If you're given a sharp knife, it seems to me better to use it than to blunt its edge to avoid cutting yourself. [3, my emphasis]

While coaching isn't therapy [4], there are certainly parallels, and many of Graham's readers might include coaching in the "something like that" category. I can't speak for therapists, but the purpose of coaching isn't to blunt the sharp knife, but to learn to how to use it. Whether my clients identify as "fierce nerds" or not, we're often working on the impact of their fierceness, and our goal is never to "turn it off," but to ensure that it's deployed with intention to desired effect. What does this look like in practice?

Cultivate the Capacity for Emotion Regulation

Emotions matter, in countless ways. They alert us to potential opportunities and threats. They're essential inputs into the process of logical reasoning. They allow us to rapidly process vast amounts of data from multiple sources in parallel, without having to rely on the vastly slower process of conscious deliberation. And they enrich the human experience immeasurably: What would it be like to live without joy--or without grief?...

[But] a simplistic interpretation of the idea that "emotions matter" is "My feelings are justified, because they are my feelings. My feelings at this moment take precedence over all other considerations. I have the right to express my feelings any way I see fit. And if I believe that you are causing my feelings, you are obligated to modify your behavior in order to align with my desired emotional state." [5]

Understand the Difference Between Force and Power

I'm not saying that forceful, expressive behavior is always unhelpful. As I've noted before, some research suggests that people with angry facial expressions are perceived as "threatening, competent, powerful, and dominant," and another study indicates that angry people may perform better in confrontational tasks. But this research applies specifically to overtly and explicitly hostile situations--in other words, anger is useful when we're in a fight.

And in my experience very, very few scenarios in organizational life can truly be classified as "fights." Plenty of professional confrontations feel like fights--but they're not really fights. Far more common are what I call "power struggles among nice people," and executives who show up in such contests acting like they're in a fight almost always lose. They misread the situation and make a host of tactical errors because force isn't power--and when we confuse the two we can actually give away power and put ourselves at a disadvantage. [6]

Wield Authority Gracefully

We can view an employee with "authority issues" not as an angry person, but an anxious one. They're unsure of their own ability to create order and safety, and uncomfortable with the power required to do so. They're in awe of the leader who can create order and safety by wielding power effectively, desperate to do so on their own, and fearful that they will fail. They are profoundly stuck, and when they cannot exert agency by moving forward, they will do so by remaining firmly in place...

An empathetic response to resentment and resistance entails viewing such behavior as an attempt by the employee, however misguided, to achieve a more comfortable relationship with power--not only that of the leader, but also their own. This doesn't mean that the leader is precluded from providing critical feedback, but this will always be more effective when delivered from an empathetic stance (which includes asking, "In what ways am I part of the problem?") [7]

---

A book that helped inspire my decision to launch my coaching practice in 2006 was Susan Scott's Fierce Conversations, and she characterizes such interactions as follows:

Focus on results. Deep-seated accountability.

Naming and addressing the issues truthfully and effectively.

The timely resolution of periodic leadership challenges.

Effectively confronting attitudinal, performance or behavioral issues. [8]

A dull instrument won't achieve these outcomes. A substantial degree of fierceness is necessary to even be willing to have such a conversation. But a sharp knife in untrained hands is a clumsy weapon, as dangerous to the person holding it as it is to someone on the receiving end. In the hands of someone who's been willing to do the work, however, such a blade becomes a scalpel, whose sharpness makes it all the more effective.

Graham seems to be suggesting that the fierce can either A) blunt themselves to avoid harm or B) act without forethought or inhibition and view any consequences as the cost of being fierce. If that's an accurate characterization of his position, this strikes me as a false dichotomy. I'm firmly committed to the idea that we can remain passionately fierce and reap all the benefits articulated by Scott above while also taking care to avoid unnecessary harm to ourselves and to others.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Talking Loud and Saying Nothing (James Brown, 1972)

[2] Fierce Nerds (Paul Graham, 2021)

• To be clear, I've also found Graham's work quite moving.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Therapy Referrals

[5] The Tyranny of Feelings

[6] Force Isn't Power

[7] Authority and Control in Organizational Life

[8] Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time, pages xx-xxi (Susan Scott, 1999 edition, revised 2004)

 

Photo by Chef Matt Rock.

Mark McGuinness on Managing Creative People

Mark McGuinness is a coach and poet based in the U.K. whose practice includes a focus on working with fellow creative people. I've appreciated Mark's work for many years, and when several of my clients unexpectedly found themselves responsible for managing creative teams, I asked him to share some advice for leaders in that position:

Creatives typically have very high levels of intrinsic motivation for their work--they really love to work, and live to do great work. This causes creative teams to hold themselves to high standards, and it's important for a leader to bear this in mind.

In a corporate setting one of the leader's most important tasks is to channel creatives' enthusiasm so that it will be most valuable to the company, ensuring the work is on-brief, on-brand and on-message, as well as artistically excellent. The best creatives are the ones who can square this circle by coming up with original and commercially relevant work, and they relish this challenge.

So when I'm working with leaders of creative teams, I encourage them to adopt a coaching style as much as possible, drawing on Daniel Goleman's six basic leadership styles. [see below] This allows the leader to draw out creatives' ideas and enthusiasm and afford them an appropriate degree of autonomy, while also monitoring progress in a supportive way.

Mark expands upon this advice in How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself), and he recommends these additional resources:

• Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need (Todd Henry, 2016): "A really good book about leading creative teams, addressed to senior creatives who are making the transition to team leader. I interviewed Todd about the book when it came out."
• Tantrums and Talent: How to Get the Best From Creative People (Winston Fletcher, 1999): "A readable book on the subject, although I don't entirely agree with the chapter on 'the creative personality.' Valuable quotes from experienced leaders, and practical advice on things like briefing and feedback."
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever (Michael Bungay Stanier, 2016): "I often buy this for clients to help them become better coaches at work, and I also interviewed Michael."

 

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For Further Reading

Coaching and Feedback Tools for Leaders: A compilation of my work on these subjects from the past decade. In this context I recommend How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize. By using coaching methods and techniques, leaders can offer useful guidance whether or not they have creative talent or experience with the creative process.

Leadership That Gets Results (Daniel Goleman, Harvard Business Review, 2000). In this classic HBR piece, Goleman discusses six different leadership styles and their impact on morale and motivation:

Coaching leaders help employees identify their unique strengths and weaknesses and tie them to their personal and career aspirations. They encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them. They make agreements with their employees about their role and responsibilities in enacting development plans, and they give plentiful instruction and feedback. Coaching leaders excel at delegating; they give employees challenging assignments, even if that means the tasks won’t be accomplished quickly. In other words, these leaders are willing to put up with short-term failure if it furthers long-term learning.

Of the six styles, our research found that the coaching style is used least often. Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow. But after a first session, it takes little or no extra time. Leaders who ignore this style are passing up a powerful tool: its impact on climate and performance are markedly positive.

 

Photo by Global Stomping.

Pick Up the Phone

My coaching practice has always been 25% virtual, but now that it's been 100% for a year, I'm seeing a shift: More and more people are opting for phone calls over video. I'm happy to work via either medium, but I'm encouraging clients to at least consider the phone, for a few reasons:

• The repetitive nature of video calls--staring at a screen all day, often while sitting in a single location--has become profoundly fatiguing. While video can be useful in certain circumstances, it's rarely essential, and the phone adds some necessary variety to our working lives.
• The phone frees us from our desk, office, or home. Many clients who opt for phone take our calls in another part of their home or outside. Some take walks around their neighborhood. We feel obligated to use video for some calls, so let's opt for freedom when we can.
• While video is sometimes additive, at other times it's a distraction. Allowing our field of vision to roam--and not worrying about how we appear to others--can free us up for more immediate, more intimate, and less stressful conversations.
• Some research suggests that phone may be preferable to video when it's important to understand and empathize with the other person's feelings: "Listeners tend to be more accurate at gauging speakers' emotions during a voice-only interaction." [1]
• And as someone who lives on a farm and depends on rural infrastructure, I know that the phone's reliability, ease of use, and uptime can be a source of relief, particularly when using an old-school landline.

In articulating the case for phone calls, I'm keenly aware that I have the luxury of working exclusively 1:1 with my clients, while most of their calls are group meetings, and there are a number of reasons why groups may prefer to work via video. In this context it's essential to recognize that many organizations are still in the process of identifying the norms that contribute to--and detract from--a healthy and productive culture when working via video.

For example, a number of clients have noted that higher-status people feel more free to turn off their video during group calls, while lower-status people do not. Others have cited the complexity of interrupting a speaker via video--frequent interruptions can leave some people feeling marginalized, while an inability to interrupt can turn a group discussion into a series of individual monologues. These disparities leave everyone feeling uncertain about how to act and unhappy with the results. A set of best practices for video calls is beyond the scope of this brief post, but further work is certainly needed. [2]

Speaking of old-school landlines, I'm reminded that in 1st grade I encountered one of the phones above--a Western Electric Model 554--at a friend's when I had to call home to see if I could stay for dinner. This was the first time I had ever called home, and I felt proud that I remembered our phone number, but I was utterly mystified by the user interface. My friend's mom had to teach me how to work the rotary dial because all the phones in our house were push-buttons :-)

 

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Footnotes

[1] Listeners Glean Emotions Better from Voice-Only Communications (Jyoti Madhusoodanan, Yale Insights, 2017, discussing research by Michael Kraus)

[2] Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)

Photo via Kenton's Antiques, where you can find a host of fascinating office equipment from the last century:

I love antique telephones and typewriters. For over 7 years, I've relentlessly looked through over 150 estate sales and 40 fleamarkets to find and refurbish over 100 beautiful telephones and typewriters. See my collection here.

The Passion Paradox for Entrepreneurs

The passion that drives entrepreneurs to achieve greatness can also take a toll on their professional and personal lives. What can we do?

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness are two of my favorite writers on the subject of human potential. Their 2017 book Peak Performance explored the implications of recent research from psychology, neuroscience and elite athletics for day-to-day effectiveness in the workplace and other domains of life.

Their latest book The Passion Paradox, published earlier this year, continues in this vein and extends the theme of their earlier work into some new directions. While its tone and approach are reminiscent of Peak Performance, Brad and Steve go beyond scientific findings and introduce a range of philosophical perspectives, from Epictetus and Seneca to Alain de Botton.

(Full disclosure: Brad and I are colleagues in the Bay Area coaching community, and I consider him a friend. I haven’t met Steve, but it would still feel a little too formal to refer to them here as Stulberg and Magness.)

The Passion Paradox is subtitled, "A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life," and Brad and Steve’s thesis is concisely stated in their final pages:

Mindlessly living with a passion can be extremely harmful and destructive. Mindfully living with a passion can be the key to a life well lived. Above all, this is the conclusion we came to after researching, reporting, and writing this book. [1]

What struck me as I read The Passion Paradox is the relevance of this idea to the leaders I work with in my coaching practice. Most of my clients are founder CEOs, and all of my clients are entrepreneurs in one way or another--they've taken a leap, they're pursuing a vision, they're building a culture. And they're deeply passionate about their work in ways that are often "the key to a life well lived," but also occasionally in ways that are "harmful and destructive."

While Brad and Steve’s book can be read profitably by anyone, below are nine key points that seem particularly significant for leaders like my clients, related patterns I've observed in my practice, and some suggested "lessons for entrepreneurs":

1. Passion and persistence have a neurological basis.

The sustained effort that’s necessary to pursue a passion in the face of adversity can be the result of a lower-than-normal sensitivity to the neurotransmitter dopamine:

Unlike other feel-good chemicals that are released after you’ve accomplished a goal, the far more potent dopamine is released prior, during the pursuit… [As a result] it’s not surprising that people who are insensitive to it (and thus need more of it to feel good) embody persistence, demonstrating unwavering determination and relentless drive. The more dopamine someone needs to feel good, the more willing she is to strive for and chase after ridiculously challenging rewards, even if doing so turns out to be detrimental to her in some way. [2]

To be clear, I don't have any data indicating that my clients or other entrepreneurs are less sensitive to dopamine, but it's a plausible hypothesis that could explain patterns that I frequently observe in my practice: Founders and other entrepreneurs work harder and longer than many other people, and they often accomplish more as a result, but they can also take less pleasure in the process and feel less fulfilled by success.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: I often have to remind clients that their employees need to celebrate company achievements--many of my clients are inclined to simply "check the box" when a milestone has been achieved and move on to the next task.

2. Struggles and failures can spur subsequent performance.

Brad and Steve draw upon a body of research suggesting that experiences of "adversity and discomfort" can fuel a determination to succeed later in life. [3] The life histories of many of my clients reflect this pattern, although the details vary widely, ranging from a sense of social exclusion in school to family turmoil to early career setbacks. I've also observed the inverse pattern--people who reach leadership positions never having experienced significant struggle or failure in life can find it difficult to regain their equilibrium when a setback occurs later in their career.

A version of this that I see in my practice involves a senior executive recruited by one of my clients to join their mid-stage company: the accomplished and polished executive isn't prepared for the inevitable stumbles that occur in a startup, and they experience these difficulties as a threat to their identity, which manifests itself as paralysis and retreat, or defensiveness and blame.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Embrace struggle and learn from failure--they're two of our best teachers. Look for these experiences when hiring, particularly in senior roles--they build reserves of resilience that leaders must draw upon to survive difficulties and help others do the same.

3. Passion is a form of addiction.

Brad and Steve cite a passage from Maia Szalavitz’s book on the neuroscience of addiction, Unbroken Brain:

When starving, when in love, and when parenting, being able to persist despite negative consequences—the essence of addictive behavior—is not a bug, but a feature, as programmers say. It can be the difference between life and death, between success and failure. However, when brain pathways intended to promote [positive attributes] are diverted into addiction, their blessings become curses. Love and addiction are alternations of the same brain circuits. [4]

And as Brad and Steve go on to note, "The line between what is good and bad, between what is productive and what is destructive, between when lots of dopamine fuels generative action and when it leads to disorder—is a fine and fragile one." [5] This is a hallmark of many of my clients--in a sense, they're addicted to work and often consider themselves happy workaholics. But the benefits to be derived from such single-minded dedication can at times be outweighed by the costs.

Something many of my clients experience is persistent and even obsessive thinking about the company--they're constantly turning it over in their minds, solving one problem so they can move on to the next. They're like a gamer who's unable to stop playing until they've "won"--which is itself a form of addictive behavior. Such passion can be a tremendous advantage in overcoming difficulties and persisting in the face of adversity, but like every superpower it has a dark side: I've had many clients who've experienced difficulty sleeping or being fully present in personal situations because thinking about work is a constant distraction.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Obsessive focus can be a superpower, and yet more isn't always better. Under some conditions it yields increasing returns, and under others it doesn't--be thoughtful about the difference.

4. Passion can be cultivated (although it may not feel good at first).

Psychologists have observed that people generally hold one of two different beliefs about how passion for work is obtained--we either find the right fit at the outset, or we develop it over time--and Brad and Steve cite a paper on this subject by a team from the University of Michigan and USC. They don't quote from it directly, but I found it sufficiently interesting to explore further, and the authors write:

The dominant mentality in America is the belief that passion is attained through finding a fit with the right line of work: We enjoy working in vocations compatible with our true selves. This is captured in the term "follow your passion," which advocates actively seeking the right fit...

[In contrast,] espousing what they consider a more realistic approach, some people suggest that passion for work can be cultivated over time in any line of work. They advocate developing one’s passion through mastery rather than expecting it from the outset. [6]

As Brad and Steve note, the vast majority of people who hold what's called a "fit mind-set" believe that "happiness comes from finding an activity or job about which they are immediately passionate, something that feels intuitively right from the get-go." [7] But the problem is that people with this mind-set tend not to follow pursuits that are initially challenging but offer greater potential for long-term growth, and they give up in the face of early disappointments.

In my experience entrepreneurs generally take the opposite perspective and hold a "developmental mind-set." My clients are clearly driven to pursue their professional goals, but they don't expect entrepreneurial leadership to feel good from the start, and when it does feel good, they're keenly aware that such feelings will probably change quickly as the business evolves and requires something new of them as a leader.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Resist the temptation to conclude that early challenges are a sign of a poor fit. Cultivate your comfort with discomfort in order to persist through challenges while pursuing growth opportunities.

5. Passions fulfill fundamental psychological needs.

Brad and Steve discuss the work of psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, who developed the concept of "self-determination theory" in the 1970s. According to this model, we remain motivated by a pursuit over an extended period when it fulfills three primary needs:

• Competency, or "a sense of control over the outcome of your efforts and the ability to make progress over time."
• Autonomy, "sometimes referred to as authenticity, [which] is about acting in harmony with your innermost being." Brad and Steve clarify this concept further by citing the work of a team of psychologists from the University of Washington:

The great benefit of being able to convincingly rationalize one’s work as a manifestation of the true self is that it gives the individual direction and purpose. Work then provides the answers to an individual’s fundamental questions: "Who am I?" and "What should I do with my life?"

• Relatedness, or "the need to feel connected to and/or like you are part of something larger." [8]

I regularly observe all of these factors in my clients, particularly founder CEOs, although each strength comes with a downside. Entrepreneurial leaders enjoy a great deal of agency and rightly believe that their individual efforts will be vital to the company’s success (or lack thereof), but as a result they often struggle to relinquish ownership of key tasks and delegate them to subordinates. Entrepreneurs generally feel personally identified with their venture, which enables them to serve a unique role as an avatar of the business, but this can undermine their sense of self-worth should the business stumble or fail. And entrepreneurs typical relish the experience of being a central figure in a community of employees, customers, and other stakeholders, and yet even the most extroverted leader needs time away from the spotlight to replenish themselves.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Just as passion itself can have an addictive dark side, the aspects of leadership that are most fulfilling can also carry a cost. Be mindful of the need to let go and delegate, maintain a separate identity, and disconnect from the role.

6. External rewards are of limited value.

University of Quebec psychologist Robert Valleyrand has suggested that our pursuits become problematic when, as Brad and Steve note, "someone becomes more passionate about the rewards an activity might bring than about doing the activity itself. As a regular reader of Stoicism, I was gratified to see Brad and Steve link this current research to the teachings of Epictetus, who warns against becoming attached to any outcomes that we do not directly control. [9]

The Stoic perspective helps us manage feelings of disappointment when we fail to obtain a desired reward, but it's just as important to limit the value we attach to any external rewards that we do obtain, because of a process known as "hedonic adaptation." As I've noted before, UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky explains that this is a double-edged sword:

The bad news about hedonic adaptation is that it ultimately dampens your happiness and satisfaction after any positive event or uplift. But there is good news, too. I would argue that human beings are actually lucky to have the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, as it's extremely useful when bad things happen. Some studies of hedonic adaptation show, for example, that we have a phenomenal ability to recover much of our happiness after a debilitating illness or accident. [10]

I observe both sides of this dynamic in my practice. No entrepreneur relishes having to lay off employees or shut down the company, and new leaders in particular can feel a profound sense of dread at the prospect. These events exact real costs, to be sure--careers flounder, dreams die, people suffer. And yet life goes on, and with the passage of time the healing power of hedonic adaptation allows the leader to recover and move on, hopefully having learned how to avoid a similar outcome in the future.

But the sword cuts both ways, of course. Entrepreneurs are as susceptible to the allure of external rewards as anyone else, and many of my clients have pursued and realized these dreams, from the heightened prominence that comes with public accomplishment to the tangible trappings of professional success. But the fulfillment that results is inevitably short-lived, and these rewards lose their ability to stimulate or soothe us as we come to take them for granted.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Keep failure and success in perspective--neither is permanent. Be mindful of the impulse to compare ourselves to others using external measures, which leads to the trap of competition.

7. Fear can be useful in the short-term, but sustained anxiety is costly.

A visceral response to fear clearly offers an important evolutionary advantage. When our early-human ancestors encountered a situation they perceived as dangerous, a powerful threat response primed them to act quickly and decisively, allowing them to survive and pass down their propensity for fright and anxiety. Their less perceptive contemporaries may have enjoyed a more stress-free life, but it was a shorter one as a result.

Yet the same neurological warning system that keeps us safe from harm when we face a literal threat to our physical safety carries a cost when we face merely symbolic threats, which is almost always the case when we encounter a potential failure in our professional lives today. Citing work by NYU's Jocelyn Bélanger and Penn State's David Conroy, Brad and Steve note that fear of failure can offer a short-term boost while imposing a long-term cost:

When we are overcome by fear, we evaluate everything as a threat. Our body and mind prepare us to survive by any means possible. But what is an effective survival response in the short run almost always morphs into anxiety in the long run. [11]

And while we can recover quickly from a sudden jolt of fear once a literal danger has passed, the experience of sustained anxiety in face of symbolic dangers can damage our psychological and physical health.

I see this consistently in my practice. Entrepreneurs face situations on a daily basis that can pose a symbolic threat, from pitching investors to tough conversations with employees, and the relatively mild and brief threat response they experience as a result can help them navigate these situations more effectively. But entrepreneurs can also experience a deeper sense of existential threat over a period of time, not only when the company is failing, but also when the company's succeeding if they're worried about their ability to keep pace as an effective leader. In these cases the toll on the leader can be grave.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Pay close attention to stress levels and make a consistent investment in self-care in order to recover. As Brad and Steve note in Peak Performance, growth results from the right combination of stress and rest.

8. Mastery requires patient effort and focused attention.

Quebec psychologist Valleyrand contrasts a destructive, extrinsically-driven "obsessive passion" with a nourishing, intrinsically-inspired "harmonious passion." [12] One of Brad and Steve's core concepts in The Passion Paradox is that we can attain a state of harmonious passion through what they call a "mastery mind-set," which we might view as an extension of the idea that you can "[develop] one’s passion through mastery," as noted above.

Brad and Steve discuss six different elements of mastery at length: intrinsic motivation; an emphasis on process over goals; consistent, marginal improvements; embracing failure as a challenge; patience; and focus. The entire framework is well worth exploring, but here I focus on the last two and their relevance to entrepreneurs.

Brad has written elsewhere on the problem with hack culture--"Most of it is complete, utter bullshit"--and The Passion Paradox connects this theme with the work of aikido master George Leonard, who disdained "what he called the obsessive personality: someone who lacks the patience and stick-to-itiveness required for mastery." And as Brad and Steve go on to note, "all the previously discussed elements of the mastery mind-set...require patience. Patience is a first principle." [13]

I'm not suggesting that entrepreneurs must be patient in growing the business--they may well need to press forward in the face of competitive threats and limited resources. But I do believe they must be patient in their efforts to develop themselves as a leader (and to support others in doing the same.) There are no hacks to becoming a better leader, no short cuts--it's an arduous process that requires sustained effort over time.

In part this is because entrepreneurial leadership ultimately involves managing attention in any number of ways: deciding what to address and what to ignore, creating the optimal conditions for strategic thinking or a difficult conversation, and regulating anxiety. But as Brad and Steve note, we often fail to treat our attention with the respect it deserves, with pernicious consequences for our effectiveness:

The majority of the time, we walk around on autopilot, not deliberately choosing where or how sharply we direct our attention. To sustain passion, however, we must remove distractions that pray on our attention and break from the mundane and automatic thoughts that normally fill our minds. [14]

The lesson for entrepreneurs: Leadership must be approached like any other demanding discipline. Progress will be contingent on your ability to treat your attention like a resource. A capacity for mindfulness will support patience as well as focus--meditation helps.

9. Balance is overrated, but self-awareness is essential.

Brad has also written elsewhere about the downside of striving for "balance," a perspective that he and I share. As Brad and Steve note, "passion and balance are antithetical," [15] and as I've written before, "balance requires an unsteady equilibrium among the various demands on our time and energy," a precarious stance for a fully committed entrepreneurial leader in a highly dynamic role. Among other proponents of a passionate approach to work, they cite Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic:

You've got to be a minimalist to be a maximalist; if you want to be really good, master and thoroughly enjoy one thing, you've got to say no to many others. [16]

Having rejected balance as a principle for developing a healthy relationship with our passion, Brad and Steve assert that the key is self-awareness:

Self-awareness is perhaps the only countervailing force strong enough to match the extreme inertia of passion. Possessing it ensures that you can thoughtfully evaluate your passions... It gives you the power to choose if and when to pull back from a passion--or, alternatively, if and when to push forward, perhaps with even more fire and drive. [17]

The problem is that many people are actually far less self-aware than they think. Brad and Steve cite research that compares peoples' self-assessments on psychological instruments with assessments made by their friends, as well as those made by total strangers who interacted with them for just a few minutes. The friends' ratings were far more accurate than the self-assessments, and even the strangers' ratings were more accurate for certain traits. [18]

This can pose a significant dilemma for the entrepreneurial leader, particularly in an early-stage company that's growing rapidly. Founder CEOs typically disdain hierarchy--that may be why they started their own company in the first place. As a result they often view themselves as an unthreatening, approachable figure--and that view is often shared by early employees, many of whom know the founder in a personal capacity or worked with them in a prior, more junior role. But fast-growing companies can't fill their ranks with the founder's friends and former colleagues, and eventually the business is populated primarily by people who know the leader only as their CEO--a role that carries ever greater power and authority as the company grows.

And so a gap emerges between the leader's self-image and how they're perceived by others, which can cause any number of problems. For example, a common challenge faced by leaders in my practice is that their passion can lead them to communicate with a great deal of intensity, because they feel a sense of urgency to make good decisions quickly. This wasn't a problem when it was a small group of employees who interacted regularly and who knew the leader as a human being, because they didn't feel intimidated by the leader's intensity and would readily push back. But it can become a big problem when the company grows beyond a certain size.

The lesson for entrepreneurs: The more successful you become, the less feedback you'll get--so ask for it. Cultivate close relationships with your direct reports and encourage them to be candid with you. Model this behavior by assessing your own performance in these conversations. And while I'm hardly objective on this point, get a coach.

 

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A personal note:

One reason why I found The Passion Paradox so useful is that it offers a perspective through which to view my own professional history. I had three careers before launching my coaching practice in 2006--a short stint as a journalist after college, and then two longer periods that preceded and followed business school. In the first I worked for organizations that served homeless and low-income families in San Francisco, and in the second I worked across the United States and beyond to help the nonprofit sector and NGOs use technology more effectively. Over the course of the latter two careers I was the first employee hired to launch three separate organizations--I'm proud that the first two are still flourishing today, and I like to think of the third as a highly educational failure.

I enjoyed my work as a journalist, but it wasn't a passion. But as I observed and wrote about life in the Bay Area I became deeply passionate about issues related to poverty and income inequality, and that passion propelled me into my career in social services. After being immersed in that world for several years, I became passionate about the potential for technology to transform how nonprofits and NGOs could deliver services and raise funding, and that passion first took me to Stanford to earn an MBA, and then led to the opportunity to serve as the first Executive Director for the Nonprofit Technology Network, known as N-TEN.

For 15 years as I pursued these various passions, my professional life was a roller coaster, rising to the heights as I helped launch new organizations and felt tremendous pride and fulfillment in my work, and then plunging to the depths as I worked long hours under conditions that eventually led to disenchantment and burnout.

But in 2005 I was volunteering to offer support to a struggling management team, and I realized that what I was actually doing was coaching, although no one was calling it that. I had been the beneficiary of some outstanding coaching when I was N-TEN's Executive Director after a member of my board encouraged me to invest in myself and get a coach, and the experience had transformed my perspective on leadership and my sense of my own capabilities. That first round of volunteering led me to seek out additional opportunities to work with leaders, and within a few months I realized that coaching was my passion.

I eventually concluded that I wasn't going to develop myself as a coach in my spare time, and I made the momentous decision to leave my current management role and launch a coaching practice. At the time it felt unimaginably risky, and yet it was clearly one of the best choices I've ever made. Over the last 14 years I've developed a "harmonious passion" for my work that aligns closely with the concepts Brad and Steve explore in their book. My "obsessive passion" enabled me to have an impact in my prior careers, but it always carried a cost and ultimately limited my long-term effectiveness. But I've pursued my career as a coach very differently--it hasn't always been a smooth process, and I made plenty of mistakes, but I adopted an approach that, with the benefit of hindsight, was very consistent with Brad and Steve's "mastery mind-set," and today it's hard to imagine doing anything else.

 

Thanks to Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness for another great contribution to the literature, and for an opportunity to see myself from a new perspective.

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Footnotes

[1] The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life, page 162 (Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, 2019)

[2] Ibid., pages 21-24

[3] Ibid., pages 27-30

[4] Passage from Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction (Maia Szalavitz, 2017) quoted in The Passion Paradox, page 31

[5] The Passion Paradox, page 32

[6] Finding a Fit or Developing It: Implicit Theories About Achieving Passion for Work, page 1412 (Patricia Chen, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, and Norbert Schwarz, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2015, Vol. 41(10))

[7] The Passion Paradox, page 37

[8] Ibid., pages 44-45

[9] Ibid., pages 60-61

[10] The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, pages 48-51 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2007)

[11] The Passion Paradox, page 70

[12] Ibid., page 74

[13] Ibid., pages 96-97

[14] Ibid., page 101

[15] Ibid., page 109

[16] Ibid., page 109

[17] Ibid., pages 125-126

[18] Ibid., pages 127-128

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For Further Reading

Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success (Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, 2017)

My review of Peak Performance

Ignoring Bandits and Building Resilience

Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

"Work Hard or Work Smart?" Is the Wrong Question

Comfort with Discomfort

Leader as Avatar

Watch That Next Step (CEO Problems)

How I Read Stoicism

The Trap of Competition

Investments, Not Indulgences

The Problem with Hack Culture (Brad Stulberg, Medium, 2017)

The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore

How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

Setting the Table (Difficult Conversations)

Attention Surplus Disorder (Anxiety and Distraction)

Maybe We All Need a Little Less Balance (Brad Stulberg, The New York Times, 2017)

Pirates in the Navy

The Blue Problem (Communication and Power)

How to Find (and Choose) a Coach