How People Work

I’ve been using Google Calendar for a week now to track progress in areas that I’m working on and it’s been really helpful! The biggest benefit is that it keeps me honest. For now, it’s also my homepage everytime I open my browser and I don’t find it hard to keep up-to-date.

Here’s a snapshot of what it looks like… each color indicates a separate calendar.

Just a preview of what this stuff means for me.
Green – a 1 to 5 qualitative rating on how I did in terms of eating healthy & portion control.
Brown – # of drinks I had that day
Pink – I write a few sentences about the emotions I felt that day.
Blue – Workout schedule
Orange – Events

Another cool feature is that you can share calendars with friends and see them in one view. Pajau and I share our events calendars, so it’s easier to plan stuff.

I watched some introductory webinars about the Strong Interest Inventory Assessment and wanted to share some high-level notes. It’s a widely used assessment for career counselors (e.g. at Stanford). They ask you questions like … how interested are you in the following: making a speech, writing a report, or doing research work. It looks helpful as a starting point, since it gives you directional advice and should help you find a job you would enjoy today. The gap of this assessment is that it probably isn’t as useful long-term because it tries to fit you into careers that already exist in the world. I’m an idealist who hopes that your future job is a job you create and it will be a combination of your skills + passions.

• Grounding Principle: What people do is a reflection of their interests. Measuring interests rather than abilities.
  • This assessment helps you determine what you’re most motivated to do right now in a career. Over time, they believe your main motivations don’t change, but the order of them do. For example, if Socializing is most important to you today and being Artistic is secondary … these probably switch over time.
• Foundationally they use the framework of General Occupational Themes, which are below. As an exercise, I put down some opinions about how these might correlate to the Myers Briggs.
  • Realist (“The Doers”) … possible correlation to ES types
  • Investigative (“The Thinkers”) … possible correlation to IT types
  • Artistic (“The Creators”) … possible correlation to NP types
  • Social (“The Helpers”) … possible correlation to NF types
  • Enterprising (“The Persuaders”) … possible correlation to TJ types
  • Conventional (“The Organizers”) … possible correlation to SJ types

Hmm, I’m probably Investigative, Social, and Enterprising as my top 3. Which might mean that it’s top-of-mind for me to learn more about this “people development” space, see how it affects the people around me, and see if “solutions” or theories that develop as a result, grow into something bigger.

WOW. I attended a two day coaching seminar at a school called New Ventures West in the city. The content was rigorous mentally AND emotionally, made deep connections immediately with the caring folks there, and personally became aware of my own deep, personal blind spots. Discovering these spots drained me, but afterwards I felt amazing how I had several body sensations that represented long-time subdued emotions.

Anyways, I think I’ll be forking over $8K to take the year long, coaching certification course next year!

Selfishly, I’ll document my own personal learnings here … and not reviewing the general methodology they practice. Simply, they try to accept the current state the client is coming to you as and try to improve upon it. They take an approach that leaves the client empowered to self-correct and self-improve.

1. You are what you practice.
2. Use the five elements model (immediate concerns, commitments, future possibilities, mood, personal/cultural history) to quickly get-to-know people.
3. During coaching intake or assessment, try to avoid fleshing out a hierarchy of information or understanding of a client. Instead take on words or phrases that you don’t understand their meaning of, and find the links necessary to gain their interpretations.
4. To build rapport for first-time relationships with clients, consider sharing how your body is feeling at the moment and open them up to share as well.
5. Imagine people as seeing the sky through a straw. Coaching helps find a new point in the sky to look at and helping them move & grow the straw.
6. Coaching can be as simple as dropping a drop of red dye in water. Help someone see one thing differently can change their life.
7. Don’t flood clients with information or advice. Try to ask “is this useful?” as a filter.
8. If you dig too deep into trying to understand the “why”, you may find yourself wasting time on discovering a nice-to-have. You might be a shy person that doesn’t want to be one anymore and trying to understand why the heck you are a shy person might be a waste of your time. Instead, you might want to accept that you’re a shy person and take actions towards changing it.
9. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes is good, but don’t forget your own state and power that you can bring to the relationship.
10. What domains of competence are you trying to solve a problem? If you choose the wrong domain, your solution will be ineffective. The domains are self-management (“I”), group (“We”), or things (“It”) domain? Look for gaps or strengths in these realms.
11. If you’re procrastinating, what are you pretending not to know.
12. Words that come out of people’s mouth generally tell less than 10% of the story. Look for body language, energy, gestures, tone, etc.

Here are some insights from leaders in the Intuit Leadership Development Organization about the importance of peer coaching relationships. I didn’t write about how to get started … but obviously we all know “peer coaching” happens all the time between close friends informally. I think it’s effective to make it formal … more to come.

What is peer coaching? (my crack at a definition) Peer coaching relationships are deep, personal connections you have with a few individuals (who face similar challenges as you do) with whom you can give and get earnest feedback.

As you read on below, think about … how important is it for me to formalize some peer coaching relationships?

Why is peer coaching important? More so than mentor-to-mentee relationships? Or leader-to-direct report relationships?

Note: Their responses are not exactly word-for-word, but I used their key phrases to piece together sentences.

Brooks Fisher: ex-Chief Marketing Officer, now Vice President of Learning and Development

Peer coaching is the bedrock for individual development. You can learn a ton from your peers … what’s working, what’s not. If you are regularly trying to meet with a leader, it’s like trying to create appointments with God. It’s important to get continuous feedback from individuals you trust. I’ve observed that the best people actively seek feedback from others.

Eric Hummel: Vice President of Leadership Development

Peer coaching is the a powerful way to accelerate an individual’s growth. I used to be a clinical psychology for 18 years, and I’ve seen proven research showing that this is true. I’ll try to find these articles for you sometime.

Felicia Gefvert: Senior Program Manager of Leadership Development

Peer coaching is build around the philosophy of learn-teach-learn. In other relationships, like a mentor/mentee relationship, it’s very one-way … one learner, one teacher. With peer coaching, both individuals are actively coaching and learning at the same time, so both sides get value and practice.

Just wanted to share a list of things I’m working on … please let me know if you wanna provide insight, learn more, or participate!

• Join the ~30 others who know the Myers Briggs lingo – The Myers Briggs provides you with a high-level framework to understand yourself and others. Helps you grasp direction into managing yourself, relationships, career, and decisions.
• Become more self-aware and start livin’ a more fulfilling life - With Fat Mike and Teo, we’re piloting peer coaching trios and have gone through about 6 weeks of pretty good self-reflection, open sharing of personal stories, and seeing life a bit differently. I’ll be starting 3 more groups with LeadersWiki team members and another with Lijen and Ben …
• Learn life lessons from Intuit leaders - With Tony, Angela, and Chris, we’re preparing a story for people early on in their careers … to be completed Jan 07. For ~6 months, we’ve gathered insights from 40 leaders at Intuit through 1 hour interviews. Originally, we thought we were going to gain insights into how to trek the career ladder faster, but instead, we walked away with more important life insights.