Archive for year: 2013

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Bev’s Tips on Networking for Busy People

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4 Tips for building your network,

even when you don’t have time!

You probably know that a circle of positive relationships is important for every aspect of your life.  Being connected is good for your mental and physical health, and it makes life more enjoyable.  In your professional life, a strong network can be vital.  Connected people stay in touch with trends and opportunities during the good times.  And when a career crisis comes, your network can help you spot the next move and go forward. 

But what do you do to strengthen your network if you don’t have the time or energy for one more project?  Try these networking tips for over-burdened professionals:

1.    Listen & notice.  You probably have casual contact with people throughout your work week.   But in many interactions you’re not fully engaged.   Instead of listening, maybe you’re thinking about what you’re going to say next, or perhaps you’re worrying about another project.  Like most of us, you’re often so distracted that you’re not taking full advantage of your opportunities to connect.  Get more from your routine conversations by becoming more mindful of what others are saying.  In each conversation, focus all your attention on the other person.  If your mind wanders, bring it back to the moment.  You might try arriving at meetings one minute early, and devoting that minute to listening to the person sitting next to you.

2.    Use every occasion.  When you are in networking mode, it makes sense to vary your patterns and get out more often.  But don’t think of “networking” occasions as special events that you attend just once in a while.  Great networkers engage with others wherever they go.  Every time you are out and about, whether it’s at a PTA conference or the gym, there’s a chance to meet somebody who could become a friend.  The goal is to connect with people as often as possible, in a genuine way.  And when you meet somebody new, do follow up, even if it is just with a two sentence email saying what a pleasure it was.

3.    Try a little social media.  My clients sometimes say they don’t want to try social media because it takes too much time.  But I urge most of them to at least sign up for LinkedIn.  At a basic level, LinkedIn operates as both a simple on-line resume and an easy-to-manage interactive address book.  By joining, you make yourself available to folks who may want to reach you.   And you acquire a tool for staying in touch with contacts, even if they move around.  When the time is right, you may choose to go further and mine your LinkedIn network for new connections and useful discussions.

4.    Give and ask for help.  The essence of networking is exchanging help and support with other people.  In a brief, positive interaction, you might simply share a smile or a kind word with the other person.  A key principle is to remain alert to small, easy ways you can add value in any situation.    Look for opportunities to offer a little assistance, or make someone’s day by saying  “thank you.”  At the same time, routinely ask for help.  For more about the smart way to build your network by requesting help, please read my recent post on Forbes.com.

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Bev’s Tips have been arriving as a zine on Tuesday mornings about 20 times a year since 2004. For more Tips, sign up for the zine, go to the zine archive or visit Bev’s blog. We’d love to hear your comments here on threejoy.com, or email Bev at: coach@clearwaysconsulting.com.

Follow Bev on Twitter. Connect with Bev on LinkedIn.

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Are You Ready to Flip?

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I gave a talk at NUS on Thursday entitled Are You Ready to Flip? Responding to Deep Faculty Challenges in an Era of MOOCs & Pervasive Online Expertise. Here’s the abstract:

The blogosphere is abuzz with MOOCs, massive, open, online courses, in which lectures are conveyed to thousands or tens of thousands of students around the globe, and the possibility of the flipped classroom, where such widely available online content is assigned outside the classroom, and classroom time is used for active learning and reflective activity.   These most recent changes come at a time when the role of the professor as research authority is challenged 24/7 by ubiquitous online resources and expertise available to graduate students at the push of an internet button

Though much has been written about the technological side of these changes, the human challenges these developments pose for successful professors and lecturers are less frequently addressed.  This talk begins by considering how all these challenges stem from a reduction in information asymmetry and how this reduction challenges the very notion of the faculty member’s privileged position as expert.  

The talk then turns to work in deep faculty development (DFD) pioneered at NUS over the last 2 and a half years.  Since its inception, this approach has spread to the US through work at iFoundry & Olin College (i2e2.olin.edu) to South America at UFMG and with the aid of Harvard-affiliated LASPAU (www.laspau.havard.edu) and to Europe through work at TUDelft and Politecnico Milano.  Using an amalgam of results from leadership studies, executive coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness research, the approach helps faculty members develop deep noticing, listening, questioning (NLQ), and narrative design skills necessary in these fluid and creative times.  

The talk highlights the concrete benefits of this approach to faculty career development, success, and happiness and concludes with an invitation to attend a short series of deep faculty development workshops open to NUS faculty this semester (semester 2).

I have written and spoken about the need for engineering education change, but this is the first time I directed similar arguments at an individual faculty member’s expertise in teaching and research.  

The powerpoint slides from the talk are available in the viewer below:

[slideshare id=16414270&doc=ready-to-flip-2-7-2013-v2-130207225809-phpapp02]

Those interested in workshops like those described should consider the I2E2 workshop, Change that Sticks, this summer (here) or write to me at deg@threejoy.com. 

 

Bev’s Tips on Managing Your Brain

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Unleash the power of your mind

to change your brain &

foster surprising achievement

Not long ago, we were taught that your brain is hard-wired and losing cells daily, and there’s not much you can do to change it or slow the process of decline.  But recent breakthroughs in neuroscience research suggest that the human brain is far more flexible, resilient and open to change than anyone ever thought.  You can manage your brain, helping it to grow beyond its current limits.  Your brain can evolve and improve throughout your lifetime, supporting the development of new skills.

Recent years have brought a wave of books that reintroduce us to the brain and explore its amazing potential.  In two of my favorites, leading scientists use ordinary language to describe how the brain works and how we each can use our mind to manage our own brain, whether we’re seeking greater achievement or a happier life.

Perhaps the most intriguing is by Alzheimer’s scientist Rudy Tanzi and prolific spiritual and medical writer Deepak Chopra.  Their book is “Super Brain – Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness and Spiritual Well-Being.”

“The human brain can do far more than anyone ever thought,” Chopra and Tanzi say. The brain is malleable. Because of its “neuroplasticity,” your brain is constantly changing.  And you have the power to promote and help shape that change.  This can be the “golden age for your brain,” they say, and you can develop a “super brain.”  Your super brain will help you to thrive on activity and change, staying in a good mood despite the unexpected.

“The Emotional Life of Your Brain” is written by another influential neuroscientist, Richard Davidson, and respected science writer Sharon Begley.  You can train your brain to shift your “Emotional Style” to one that is more resilient, positive and aware, according to Davidson and Begley.  Your Emotional Style is your way of responding to experiences and challenges, and is governed by identifiable, measurable brain circuits.  Through simple exercises and practices like meditation, you can rewire your circuits and change the way you function on a daily basis.

Here are 4 tips for using your mind to transform your brain:

  • Manage your thoughts.  “The first rule of super brain is that your brain is always eavesdropping on your thoughts.  As it listens, it learns,” say Chopra and Tanzi.  In other words, if you think limiting thoughts like, “I can’t remember a thing,” your brain will perform in a way that is consistent with your expectations.  But you can push your brain to a higher level of performance, including by “trading out toxic beliefs,” adopting a higher vision and enthusiastically learning new things.
     
  • Become more adaptable.  Highly successful people, like Albert Einstein, aren’t simply more intelligent than the rest of us.  According to Chopra and Tanzi, they use their brain in a way that is keyed to success.  And the “key is adaptability.”  Einstein developed the strengths of “Letting go, being flexible and hanging loose.”  Instead of remaining stuck in the same old behaviors you, too, can become more adaptable.  You need to stop repeating what never worked in the first place.  And “See righteous anger for what it really is – destructive anger dressed up to sound positive.”
     
  • Express gratitude.  You can make your Emotional Style more positive through exercises that promote well-being, say Davidson and Begley.  They suggest you “Pay attention to times you say ‘thank you.’ When you do, look directly into the eyes of the person you are thanking and muster as much genuine gratitude as you can.”  And at the end of each day journal about your moments of gratitude.
     
  • Try mindfulness meditation.  By meditating, you can change your brain and become more self aware and resilient.  Davidson and Begley suggest you try out mindfulness meditation with a simple technique involving awareness of breathing:
  • Sit upright on the floor or a chair, with a straight spine and a relaxed but erect posture.
  • Focus on your breathing, on the sensations it triggers in your abdomen and throughout your body.
  • Focus on the tip of your nose, noticing the sensations with each breath.
  • When you are distracted by unrelated thoughts, simply return your focus to your breathing.

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Bev’s Tips have been arriving as a zine on Tuesday mornings about 20 times a year since 2004. For more Tips, sign up for the zine, go to the zine archive or visit Bev’s blog. We’d love to hear your comments here on threejoy.com, or email Bev at: coach@clearwaysconsulting.com.

Follow Bev on Twitter. Connect with Bev on LinkedIn.

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4 Steps to Improving Your Leadership Presence

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I was working with a client on confidence in public speaking and other stressful public situations, and the conversation turned to leaders with great presence.  Presence is an interesting quality in that it is difficult to articulate in words, yet we know it when we see it.

Oftentimes coaching deals in words, but some of the most beneficial coaching is somatic coaching or coaching for physical presence in body, and one of the most beneficial resources for leadership presence is Halpern and Lubar’s book Leadership Presence based on work at the Ariel Group that uses experience from acting and theatre training to help leaders show up authentically and well.

The basic model of the book goes by the acronym PRES or

  • P – Being Present
  • R – Reaching Out
  • E – Expressiveness
  • S – Self-knowing
The text is filled with a variety of exercises and experiences that get readers to feel presence in action. If you are interested in your leadership presence or in working with others, you can do worse than to dip into this useful book.

It’s 2013. Everyone Needs a Coach!

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Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google explains why everyone needs a coach (via the ICF Singapore FB page here).

httpv://youtu.be/mQXiajmANYs

If Eric Schmidt of Google needs one, so do you.  ThreeJoy Associates can recommend a number of ICF-trained coaches with experience matching your needs.  Write to Dave Goldberg at deg@threejoy.com to line up a complementary session to help make 2013 as successful as you want it to be.

Getting to Tenure and Having a Life?

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I subscribe to a number of LinkedIn groups, and one of them is the group Higher Education Teaching and Learning (here).  The other day, I noticed an inquiry from a consultant and coach named Meggin McIntosh (here) in which she inquired as follows:

Is it possible to balance teaching, research, service AND a relationship while on the way to tenure? If so, how (real answers wanted).

As might be imagined, the answers were quite various ranging from “no” to “yes” with “maybe” in between.  I weighed in in the affirmative as follows.  In doing so, I imagined addressing the tenure seeker directly one on one:

I think the answer is “yes” and I think there is a threefold success formula: (1) form habitual practices around those things and people that are important to you (2) do a minimally acceptable job preparing for teaching first time through, thereby giving you maximum probability of satisfying your institution’s research requirements to tenure, and (3) do your research and writing to please yourself, not for the approval of others..

The fundamental problem is that any one of the Big 3–research, teaching, and service–can consume all available time in your life. Stephen Covey made the distinction between urgent things, things important to others, and important things, things important to you. The Big 3, particularly research is urgent, important to the university, but in the pressure cooker of pretenure university life, make things important to you, spending time with a partner, kids, and friends, a habit. Make other important-to-you non-work related activities–sports, exercise, eating right, music, hobbies–habitual, and sacrifice your habits only upon rare occasion. Charles Duhigg’s, The Power of Habit, is a nice reference for the value, formation, and maintenance of habitual practices.

Second, when it comes to teaching, first time through a course, give yourself enough time to prepare, but make it a fixed amount of time (x hours per class period, for example). Don’t allow your perfectionist tendencies to take over. Stick to your fixed time allocation. Also, capture and reuse your notes next time through. If you follow this prescription, most days, you will do fine. Some days, you will be underprepared, but second time through you will probably be peak and do well if you haven’t overdone it.

Finally, do your research and writing to make yourself happy. A lot of heads and profs tell you otherwise: do this, and don’t do that, but my experience has been that most of that advice is well intentioned and not tailored to you. Do your research for yourself and your interests with gusto and enthusiasm. View it as “publish and flourish” not “publish or perish” and follow your heart.

Two things can happen if you do this. You will get tenure on your own terms and you will be a happy, confident camper, ready to continue on your own terms. If you don’t get tenure, you will have been true to yourself and perhaps the academy really wasn’t where you were meant to be. You can then move on to something else with integrity knowing that you’ve learned something about yourself.

To do otherwise is to risk unhappiness in two different ways. If you do your research to please others, you might get tenure, but you risk diminished confidence in your own judgment to the possible detriment of your future courage and boldness.  If you don’t get tenure, you’ll always wonder what might have been had you remained true to your own vision, and you may regret not having found out.

Of course, my advice risks not being tailored to you, as I suggested other well-intentioned advice might be, and if that is the case, only use those portions of what’s being suggested here that seem reasonable to you, your aspirations, and your context.

Best wishes in navigating the tricky thicket of getting to tenure.

I don’t think this is a unique “correct” answer, of course, and one’s perspective might vary depending on one’s gender, responsibility at home, desire to pursue a program of research consonant with an institution’s values, and other factors, but to the degree that someone can be disciplined about keeping up habits that maintain strong relationships and the other items mentioned, I do believe one can have a life and get to tenure, both. If you agree or disagree, share your views at deg@threejoy.com.

5 Smooches of MOOCs

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I just posted a piece (here) about massive open online courses or MOOCs on www.bigbeacon.org.  The piece is entitled MOOCs, Moola, and Love: 5 Smooches of MOOCs, and in it I consider why students are signing up in droves for these courses and how these ideas connect to the emotional/cultural emphasis of the Big Beacon and ThreeJoy.  I identified the central question as follows:

Why are hundreds of thousands or millions of students signing up for “bad” old boring lectures taught to thousands or tens of thousands simultaneously when the future of education supposedly lies elsewhere?

The 5 answers to the questions I call MOOC smooches.  In short, students love MOOCs because they love (1) good lectures, (2) high status lecturers, (3) choice, (4) novelty, and (5) community.  The article connects these things to the pillars of the Big Beacon: joy, trust, courage, openness, and connection.

Read the full post here.