This year thousand of biking professionals and aficionados watched with heart ache how Lance Armstrong started losing time daily through out the Tour of France stages. Weeks before the Tour I read several articles where Armstrong positively explained the superiority of his team, the coaching staff and his personal readiness to make a new attempt for the title.
There is quite a story behind the stunning results. Armstrong was disheartened to realize to what extent the younger cyclist participating in the 2010 Tour de France were capable of. The fans, the critics and the world witnessed also the defeat of the champion. Many of them heavily criticized Lance for the foolish decision to attempt to conquer the yellow jersey one more time
Now that is all over I look back and try to put myself on Lance’s position attempting to discover the WHY he decided to do it and what I come out with is that in order to do what he did takes a lot of courage, dedication, toughness and a huge desire to reach success.I truly believe that he was not so much interested on the yellow jersey at the end but rather test his ability to fulfill the expectation to succeed.
As a biker that loves the sport I can see the evolution of the bicycle and how the industry has created the sleekest and fastest bicycles in the world. Without a champion who could provide the resources, passion, design facilities and expertise, the great biking athletes would never have realized their dream.
Lance thank you for your efforts and gift to the cycling community.
Effective leadership is the creation of “willing followers”. In other words, more effective leadership involves the engagement of people rather than the control of them. What makes the concept of leadership as “engaging” rather than “controlling” more valuable? The simple answer lies in the amount of energy that followers will invest if they do so willingly rather than through compulsion. As a result, these willing followers will generally be more focused and give more of their discretionary time towards the desired vision and outcomes.
“It is important to acknowledge a mistake instantly, correct it, and learn from it. That literally turns a failure into a success. Success is on the far side of failure.”T.J. Watson 1874-1956, Founder if IBM
While in a coaching session with two of my clients last week they wanted to know the best way to get others to follow the vision they are attempting to make stick inside their company. They feel that people is listening but not taking the actions necessary to make the vision a reality.
My first question was: What is the level of trust between you and your people? After a short moment of silence one of them said that they were not sure and probably the trust level was low. I point them out that they are not likely to lead people through wrenching change if they don’t have a culture of trust. And if they are to trust you, they have to know you: who you are, where you have come from, and why you hold the views you do. Ideally, they’ll end up not only understanding you but also empathizing with you.
They went on asking: how do you do that? One of the things I spend a lot of time with executives during Leadership Development is discussing story telling. I am a firm believer that storytelling is an increasingly accepted way to achieve management goals. One of the patterns that I teach my clients is called “Communicating Who You Are.” Stories for this purpose are usually based on a life event that reveals some strength or vulnerability and shows what the speaker took from the experience. Unlike a story designed to spark action, this kind is typically “well told,” with colorful details and context.
For example, Jack Welch’s success in making GE a winner was undoubtedly aided by his ability to tell his own story which includes a tongue-lashing he once received from his mother after he hurled a hockey stick across the ice in response to a disappointing loss. His mother chased the young Jack Welch into the locker room where the young men on the team were changing and grabbed him by the shoulders. “You punk!” he reports her saying in his memoir, “If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know hoe to win.”
On the face of it, this is a story about Jack Welch’s youth, but it’s also a story about the Jack Welch of today. From this story, we get a good idea of the kind of person Jack Welch became as CEO of GE, obsessed with winning, strong on loyalty, and with an aggressive style of behavior, someone who is very much “in your face.”
As an Executive Coach, I often work with clients taking actions toward fulfilling their goals. People solve problems based on previous experiences and don’t take into consideration very important factors available to them such as moods and emotions. Moods and emotions, as pre-dispositions for action, are critical in shaping our capacity for action. In the coaching interaction, we look at moods and emotions from this perspective, and explore how to be present to and to work with moods and emotions to expand your capacities for action. When you choose to be coached by Human Architecture you will:
Discover how moods and emotions impact the ability of you and others to take action.
Gain an experiential understanding of how moods and emotions shape your capacity for action.
Learn how to shift moods for yourself and others.
Learn how to be more fully present to others and their emotions to “meet them where they are.”
Learn to how design practices to shift your moods and expand your capacity for action.
Experience how the body is a terrain for learning and lasting change and how to work with the body in your daily life.
Several contemporary thinkers, particularly Daniel Goleman, have been working with the issues of emotions and how they impact us in both our personal and professional lives. Emotions are not just about how we feel. Moods and emotions pre-dispose us to action—when we are affected emotionally by an experience, then it fundamentally alters our capacity for action. This understanding is crucial to coaching, both in terms of understanding how to work with your own emotions and moods, and also in understanding how to work with the moods and emotions of the people around you.
“I coach individuals and organizations to pursue excellent performance, to become competent at self observation, to become self-correcting, and eventually self-generating.”
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The world is experiencing a crisis people are loosing their jobs while others are taking advantage of corporations and their investors. Families are being broken while others are willing to stop, take a look at the situation they are in and make new commitments that will allow them to stay together for the benefit of the whole.
We are being bombarded day and night by the news enterprises with exaggerations of the reality and that is creating a sense of fear, resignation and cynicism. People are angry and they are expressing their feelings in blogs every minute. The world future appears dark and hopeless.
Don’t worry I have good news for you today. A friend of mine sent me this You Tube clip that will revive your TRUST on the Human Spirit.
