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| About David Allen |
| The David Allen Company is a professional training, coaching, and management consulting organization, based in Ojai, California, USA. Its purpose is to improve the quality of life by providing the world’s best information, education, and products that enhance personal and interactive productivity. |
Recent Article:
The Coach as Personal Trainer: Re-Grooving Critical Behavior in Real Time
- For more on David Allen visit www.davidco.com
Knowing what to do and doing it as automatic behavior are two very different things. We can watch a video, read
a book, and attend a seminar which can impart significantly useful information and perspectives. Much that is
required of the new leadership style, however, is not about what we know, but about how we personally operate
when the heat’s on. And we often need professional help in real time to install new behaviors, and to get and
keep us at the enhanced levels we want to function.
It’s not about what we can spout at the next staff meeting (“oh god, did he take another seminar again?!”) It’s
about consistently applied high-leverage responses and activities that happen on cruise control. It’s about what
we can be trusted to be doing, by others and (most importantly) by ourselves, when the pressure of the real world
is at hand. To rapidly make those kinds of permanent changes and enhancements to our life- and work-styles,
we need models, mentors, and most importantly, personal coaches, whom we spend real time with, getting us to
do the real things we really need to be doing, from now on.
As leaders we truly want to work differently. And when we suddenly know better, we want it to happen yesterday
(and why not, since we know it is the thing to do?) But self-propelling strategic conduct, if it does not exist at the
desired level already, will seldom occur by itself, and certainly not quickly.
We can shift our behaviors with will power, but for a very limited time. If you are strong and especially strongheaded,
I’ll give you a few days. If you’re on a retreat in the mountains, with no phone, fax, or computer...maybe
even a week. After that, auto pilot shows up. The intense onslaught of all of your temporal engagements is back
at your door. There are too many things in the world that you need to focus your conscious attention on, and you
don’t have the personal bandwidth to keep hold of the new direction. You know better, but you don’t do better. (I
doubt anyone reading this doesn’t have at least a few of these little numbers in his/her internal dialogue.)
Why did I just eat three doughnuts?! Jeez, I lost my temper again! I just haven’t been able to get to the gym this
week... I just haven’t had the time to update my directs on my thinking... I’ve forgotten to keep Susan in the loop
on this project... I forgot to write it down... etc. etc. ad nauseum.
We all have our weak suits. And some of them may be moving into the area of mission- or values-critical. Not
long ago my results-oriented personality was required to get us off the ground. But now it’s limiting senior team
initiative. Not long ago my tolerance of tons of incompletions was required to stay sane and focused on what we
had to do. Now I’m up against the prices I’ve paid for un-kept agreements. Growth. Maturity. New demands for
new situations in new worlds.
I’m sure this book about executive coaching came to be because there is a post-Maslowian world of sophisticated
people for whom improving themselves does not mean admitting to failure or being broken. Excellence, quality,
reach and impact are now open-ended golden chalices out in front of the best of us.
So there are things we all need and want to learn, to give us the edge we want or to unlock the potential we
strive to fulfill. One of the two greatest values of a coach has always been the consultant’s role: to give us new and useful points of view. Perspective is the slipperiest and most valuable commodity on this planet. No matter
where you are, no matter how low you go, your viewing point about where you are and where you want to go
and how you could get there will be a priceless commodity. We need to see “outside the box.” We need to hear
non-invested opinions about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. This is, and always will be, the value of
consultants.
But if we want it to happen now, and we want it to stick, we need to put ourselves in the hands of a trainer, who
coaxes and coaches us through the new behaviors in real time, in the real world. We need and want someone
or some thing to be the stake in the ground we can hang on to, to get us past the unconscious deep grooves of
our habits. We need a tether to tie ourselves to that will hold us steady and that will be a grounding rod against
the hurricanes of past conditioning and the demands of our lives that distract us from consciously controlled
new behavior.
Anyone who has ever worked with a personal physical exercise trainer knows exactly what I mean. When I have
really dedicated myself to changing my physiology and physical regimen, the most effective times have always
been when I committed the time and money to engage someone I trusted to take me to levels of consistency and
performance that my own comfort zones would not facilitate.
We need to groove new grooves in our patterns. The fastest way is to commit to a coach, whose job and contract
is to hold a focus and a format that helps us retread. The new pattern needs to be cut, and the channel needs
to be deepened. It could be a new way to think, a new way to feel, and/or a new way to act and respond. But
if it’s a “new way” at all, it’s unfamiliar territory to the unconscious part of us, and it needs to be made much
more friendly to our basic nervous system. We want to become “unconsciously competent.” We don’t want to
be burdened or beholden to another person to keep us in line, forever. We know that ultimately we need to be
just doing it ourselves as a way of life and work. But we have to acknowledge that the path to that freedom is
not free.
I have found it useful with my clients to remind them of an old behavioral model, that identifies four stages of
moving to permanently changed conduct:
(1) Unconscious incompetence
“I don’t even know that I don’t know what I don’t know.” Many people just wander around in the miasma of not
realizing what they don’t realize is a problem. They’re just in it, and basically numb. Pain/aspiration (and therefore
change) factor = zero.
(2) Conscious incompetence
“I now know where I ought to be and what I ought to be doing, but I don’t know how to get myself there, or get
myself to do it.” This is the first “aha!” that we have, and now we know that things could and should be different
than they are, but boy it beats me how to actually go about it! I now know that I ought to have a “collaborative
culture” but I don’t actually know how or if I can do it. I know that we should be “leading edge”, in the “eye of the
tornado” or facilitate “innovation”, but what do I do this afternoon? Pain/aspiration factor = variable, depending
on the commitment to the new standard. This is the stage people often find themselves in after a great book, seminar, or other initial educational and eye-opening experience.
(3) Conscious competence
“I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, (but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall
off the wagon regularly.)” Pain/aspiration factor = variable, depending on commitment to the new standard and
the delta between current reality and that standard. This is the really tricky ground. We’ve been to the seminar,
we’ve actually tried and tested some things to do ourselves, we’ve really gotten enthused because we know that
we can do it and how to get there. But, damn! I don’t seem to be able to stay there! We set up the new system,
my secretary and I agreed to some new policies about how we’d work together, we had a couple of staff meetings
that broke ground for a new level of communication and openness, but golly, things seem to be back to business
as usual, and I’m afraid we may have wasted all our money on the consultant! I know now how to drive the car,
but I have to keep reminding myself to keep the hands on the wheel, and to stay conscious of the car and how
I’m driving it. Too often I’m getting distracted by the scenery and my habitual thinking, and I forget to focus on
the new and controlled behavior I need to maintain.
(4) Unconscious competence
“I just do it. I only think about it when I don’t do it, and I then have to go do it.” This is real motivation, when the
word “motivation” never occurs to you. You just do it. It’s brushing teeth, taking a shower. I’d just feel awkward
and uncomfortable and out of sorts if I didn’t do it. Of course I empty my voicemail and get my in-basket to
“empty” every day. If I didn’t, the “scuzz factor” would be too high. Of course my staff is happy and eager to come
to work. If they weren’t, it would feel too weird...we just don’t let that happen.
The unconscious competence level should be the aim. Get the behavior onto cruise control. Set the internal
standard, the “set point”, so grooved into the nervous system, that you can’t stand things to be different from
that. I do not have to motivate myself to purge my thinking, capture my commitments, make the required action
decisions about them, and review the whole thing regularly. Why? I can’t stand the discomfort of not doing that.
Coaching is a high-leveraged way to get from stage (2) or (3) to stage (4).
I train executives in critical personal behaviors that are required in the new world of knowledge work-how to
collect, process, and organize all the inputs, ideas, information and commitments that are potentially relevant to
their life and work. I teach how to make action decisions when things show up, instead of when they blow up.
And I give people a model of how to keep their head clear and keep everything in their life on track, with minimal
effort.
It’s good to know what to do in this regard. I give seminars and write frequently to many audiences about an
understandable and highly functional model for personal organization and productivity. But if the executives who
recognize the potential value of implementing that in their life really want to make it happen, I have to spend real
time with them, dealing with the real things in their real world.
In coaching people about dealing with workflow and personal organization, I have to have at least two contiguous
days with them privately at their desk, with no outside interruptions. I have to ensure that my client applies the personal workflow model I’ve developed to the hundreds of emails, voicemails, pieces of paper, and
internal thoughts (“oh yeah I need to...”’s) lying around, which they have allowed over the transom into their
psychological “ten acres.” And then I need to keep following up with them, in some way, to keep the new
behaviors reinforced.
They can take my seminar about that model, which is very much like watching a video about playing tennis.
They’ll get totally enthused that there is a game called tennis, and what it could look and feel like playing it with
excellence and ease. And they’ll get to hold a tennis racket in their hand and hit a couple of balls, to let them
know that there is a connection between where they are and where they could be.
But if they really want to start to live and work in a way that has nothing on their mind and things are getting done
with productive efficiency and effectiveness, then we need to get onto the court for many hours, and actually
have them hit thousands of balls coming at them in a multitude of ways. We need to practice going through
emails, voicemails, pieces of paper on the desk, one at a time-What is it? What does this mean to you? What are
you going to do with this? What’s the next action? And we need to set up the working system that will hold the
results of that process, in real time, for those real things, in a way that the person may actually use.
They may love the idea that their head could be rid of distracting thoughts and stress about what they should/
could be doing, but they can not actually have that experience until they are willing to actually do the things they
need to do, to make that happen.
In twenty years of teaching, consulting, and coaching hundreds of executives about and with this process, I have
never seen one exception to this rule. You must be led by the hand into this experience with a coach... or it will
not happen, permanently, to the level you would like it to.
The challenge is to frame and address the more subtle behaviors, the ones that limit or expand our effectiveness
in the world. We need to do this in the same way many of us have identified physical exercise as a strategic
behavior to install in our lives, for which we have found the coach we needed and wanted to have, to make it
happen at a new cruising level.
So what are they? How would I operate differently if I were to really step up to the plate of matching my vision
of how good and effective I could be? What are the things that I need to be doing more of, more consistently,
that I think would get me where I want to go? And then find the person or people who have models and formats
designed to keep you on the straight and narrow, to keep you re-grooving the patterns of thinking and acting that
you know would serve you and the people you serve.
The really great leaders are the ones who keep the people around them whom they trust will hold their feet to the
fire, and whom they give the time and permission to keep them constantly focused on the prize.
To commit to a hands-on, real time coach is not a sign of weakness. It is rather the indication of a sophisticated
awareness of the effectiveness of leveraging the best tools to restructure our automatic response systems in
ways that create ever greater opportunities.
The Coach as Personal Trainer ReGrooving Critical Behavior in Real Time - To learn more about this author, visit David Allen's Website.
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