Bill George: Reflections on “Mindful Leadership” Retreat

I have previously published my interview with renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. His coaching philosophy is based upon Buddhist principles.

Marshall Goldsmith on Personal Values

There is a school of thought in business coaching that believes in strict adherence to a behavior modification model, one that is based on changing a client’s reaction to external conditions. However, in Goldsmith’s new book Mojo, he states that a person’s identity, her self-definition, is one of the building blocks of a positive spirit. He believes that we have no “fixed identity” but instead we are ever changing. During our video interview, I first asked him to explain how coaching to change a client’s identity is different from coaching to change behavior. Goldsmith also described his talk with Bono and the evolution of U2 singer’s identity from rock star to include a humanitarian persona.

Marshall Goldsmith on Identity(video)

Later in the interview, he gave his advice on how to be happy and let go of guilt. Goldsmith used parables to deftly illustrate his insights for releasing the emotional burdens that chain us to habitual patterns and prevent us from experiencing self-acceptance.

Marshall Goldsmith on Letting Go of Guilt (video)

Meng Tan, whose official title at Google is “Jolly Good Fellow,” is an early employee of Google who for years worked as a software engineer at the company and is now Head of Google University’s School of Personal Growth, where among other activities he oversees and teaches the mindfulness-based program, “Search Inside Yourself.”

TEDTalks: Google’s Meng Tan at the UN (video)

In a powerful example of the effectiveness Eastern philosophy can have in a business environment, executive coach Pamela Weiss, founder of Appropriate Response, and Todd Pierce, former CIO of Genentech and now EVP at salesforce.com, have demonstrated the amazing ROI of teaching mindfulness to workers. Their work has been highlighted Harvard Business Review and O Magazine.

The Amazing ROI of Mindfulness

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• Reflections: Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (reflectionsinapuddle.wordpress.com)

Bio from his website www.chademeng.com:

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is Google’s Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny). Like many things in Google, his unusual job title started as a joke, but eventually became real.

Meng was one of Google’s earliest engineers. Among many other things, he helped build Google’s first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google’s search quality. After a successful 8-year stint in Engineering, he now serves with GoogleEDU as the Head of Personal Growth. One of his main projects is Search Inside Yourself - a Mindfulness-based Emotional Intelligence course, which he hopes will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.

Outside of Google, Meng is the Founder and (Jolly Good) President of the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation, a small foundation dedicated to promoting Peace, Liberty and Enlightenment in the world. He is a Founding Patron of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).  He is also a Founding Patron of the World Peace Festival, and adviser to a number of technology start-ups.

Meng earned his MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He went to Santa Barbara mainly for the beach, but didn’t mind the graduate degree either. He has won many computing-related awards, including the Championship of Singapore’s National Software Competition. Prior to coming to the United States, Meng had a successful engineering career in Singapore. (He knew it was successful because nobody offered to fire him).

Meng created one of the world’s earliest websites on Buddhism in 1995. He considers himself a Buddhist “on most weekdays, especially Mondays”. He is an avid meditator, because meditation facilitates in him inner peace and happiness “without doing real work”. Meng occasionally finds himself featured on newspapers.  He was featured on the front page of the New York Times and delivered a TED talk at the United Nations.  He has met three United States Presidents, Obama, Clinton and Carter.  The Dalai Lama gave him a hug for his 40th birthday. His personal motto is, “Life is too important to be taken seriously”.

Meng hopes to see every workplace in the world become a drinking fountain for happiness and enlightenment. When Meng grows up, he wants to save the world, and have lots of fun and laughter doing it. He feels if something is no laughing matter, it is probably not worth doing.

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Inner Experiments at Genentech from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

Here is information from the Appropriate Response website:

THE PERSONAL EXCELLENCE PROGRAM

Since 2007, Appropriate Response has worked with over 650 employees at every level within the IT department at Genentech in South San Francisco through the Personal Excellence Program (PEP.) PEP offers a comprehensive structure of personalized development over one year, including facilitated groups, individual coaching, communities of support and feedback, and the cultivation of peer coaching skills.

View a five minute video of Pamela Weiss welcoming a new PEP class.

Click here to read a White Paper on the principles and practices of PEP.

The PEP Impact

Results from 2010 PEP participant surveys found that compared to before the PEP program:

First Year PEP Participants

• 100% reported increased understanding of their critical development areas
• 100% reported increased confidence in having the necessary tools and knowledge to develop
• 99% reported being more engaged and productive at work
• 87% reported increased meaning and satisfaction at work
• 100% rated PEP as better than other training programs

PEP Graduate Program Participants

• 97% reported increased ability to self-observe and self-correct
• 91% reported improved listening and peer coaching skills
• 80% reported feeling more responsible and accountable for their own development
• 80% reported being better able to deal with change and ambiguity
• 100% rated PEP as better than other training programs

Business Impact Study

A 2009 independent evaluation of PEP by experts who have studied the impact of hundreds of leadership programs reported that:

• PEP led to significant business impact, more than doubling the typical impact assessed in other leadership programs (77% vs. 30%.)
• PEP ranked in the top 5% of all leadership programs evaluated.
• PEP produced an estimated $2 dollars for every dollar spent to deliver PEP.

Employee Satisfaction

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Cover via Amazon

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better – by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams.

MOJO was released in February 2010.  It is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal top ten best-seller – and the Shanghai Daily #1 business book in China.  It is already scheduled to be translated into 14 languages.

In November 2009 Dr. Goldsmith was recognized as one of the fifteen most influential business thinkers in the world in the bi-annual study sponsored by The (London) Times and Forbes.  The American Management Association named Marshall as one of 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years.  He is one of only two educators who have won the Institute of Management Studies Lifetime Achievement Award. Major business press acknowledgments include: BusinessWeek – most influential practitioners in the history of  leadership development, Wall Street Journal – top ten executive educators, Forbes – five most-respected executive coaches, Leadership Excellence – top five thinkers on leadership, Economic Times (India) – top CEO coaches of America, Economist (UK) – most credible executive advisors in the new era of business and Fast Company – America’s preeminent executive coach.

RY: How have your personal values influenced your career success?

MG: My personal values have a great deal to do with my career. I’m a Buddhist. My coaching philosophy is based upon basic Buddhist teachings. It is hard to differentiate between my personal values and my career because my career is greatly influenced by my personal values.

RY: How do you use Buddhism in your coaching?

MG: Part of my coaching is called Feed Forward.  It is derived from the Buddhist principle that you should only do what I teach if it works for you. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. Ask people for input and consider their response a gift. Don’t talk back. Learn from everyone around you. Don’t promise to do everything. Do what you can. Do what works for you. Stick with it. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Get better.

Pick the right coaching clients and your coaching practice will always work. Pick the wrong coaching clients and your coaching practice will never work. With coaching it’s all about your own ego.  The biggest problem with coaches is ego, including me. We want people to be better so we can feel better about ourselves. And a very Buddhist concept is getting rid of your ego. To get rid of your ego, you need to be helpful and realize how you screwed up. And you’ll probably get alot better.

RY: It seems to be easier for clients to accept your Buddhist methods because you only get paid if the client sees results.

MG: Yes, no results, no pay. Most coaches get paid for two bad variables: A) How much time did I spend? Bad measure. And B) Do my clients like me? Bad measure. I don’t get paid because my clients like me, nor do I get paid because I spend my time. I get paid because I get results. The key cost [for clients] in hiring me is their time. The last thing CEOs want is to waste their time. Their time is worth far more than my salary.

RY: I was interested to read about your career transition from customizing 360 assessments to management consulting.

MG: Well, it was the best mentoring I ever got, and the mentoring was from Dr. Paul Hersey. He told me I was too good at what I did, I made too much money, and I would run around doing the same thing over and over again, but I wasn’t developing into the person I could be. And for 10 or 12 years he was right; that’s exactly what I did. It’s very hard not to fall into the trap of inertia. My three favorite lines in the book, Mojo, are “Our default response in life is not to experience happiness; our default response in life is not to experience meaning; our default response in life is to experience inertia”. We all want to know where we’re going, so it’s very hard to break out of inertia.

RY: We don’t often hear prominent management consultants promoting their religion. Why are you choosing to do it?

MG: I think we’re afraid to be rejected. Even me saying I’m a Buddhist, I’m sure people would be afraid to say that. They think, “OMG, I must sound weird or esoteric” or “I’m afraid no one is going to like me because I say I’m a Buddhist”. It has not hurt my career. I’m very open that I’m a Buddhist and that I learned Buddhist philosophy.

RY: How can people learn more about your management coaching?

MG: If you go to www.MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com and go to Free Resources, I give everything away. All my materials can be copied, shared, or downloaded.

RY:  And generosity is a very Buddhist concept.

MG: You know what? I called Buddha and asked “Should I send you a commission?” (laughter). He said  “No, don’t worry about it.”

© 2010  Ryan E. Yip

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This above all: to thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.

–Shakespeare

An interesting theory about the human operating system originated long ago. It’s called Huna. And it’s the concept of selves. This ancient theory suggests that human beings consist of three selves:

• The High Self- This self connects with our spiritual side. It always seeks the highest good for you and others.
• Conscious Self – This might be the area we’re most familiar with. It’s where we determine our choices and actions.
• Basic Self– This self houses our comfort zone, inner child, and will to survive. It the place where our habits develop.

You can see traces of Huna in the work of Carolyn Myss and even in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—from pyramid’s bottom to the top —Survival, Safety, Nurture, Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualization, and Transpersonal.

Anyway, the idea is to get the selves in sync with each other. However, even if you’re aware of the selves, getting the basic self to cooperate can be challenging.

For example, let’s say you know that you need to lose 30 pounds. You know that if you do, you’ll feel and look better. Not to mention that your reduced proportions may extend your life. Your conscious self is inspired by your high self, and therefore aspires to this goal.

However, your basic self isn’t ready. Ingrained eating habits (cookies for breakfast, fast food for lunch) and behaviors (eating while reading) resist attempts by the conscious self to alter set patterns.

Ch-Ch-Changes
It’s interesting to see the power a five-year-old can have over two adults. It’s often the same with the basic self. Unless the conscious self provides good direction, the basic self can develop bad habits and start to steer the ship. –John-Roger

What prevents us from connecting our selves together? What keeps us from acting in our own apparent self-interest?

The basic self can be viewed as a young child needing guidance. It can be petulant and throw temper tantrums when disturbed. The techniques used to get the basic self to cooperate with the conscious self are similar to those in raising children.

Communicate in a patient and clear way the reasons for your change in behavior. Reward the basic self after a positive behavior. Obviously, the key here is giving the reward after good behavior rather than splurging beforehand.

Other methods include journaling, reciting affirmations, and meditating. In yogic psychology, the basic self is generally centered in the solar plexus, sacral, and root chakras, so placing your hand on your abdomen just below your naval can have a calming effect.

Since the basic self likes to keep busy completing tasks, choosing to do chores and errands rather than indulging in bad habits like excessive drinking and smoking will help to increase self-esteem, not to mention allow time for loftier endeavors!

Robert Waterman has done work on integrating the concepts of increasing cooperation of the three selves, ascending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and aligning the chakras.

For now, I have to get my basic self to take out the trash.

*Beyond The Comfort Zone