Accel5, is a microlearning solution company for employees looking to improve critical soft skills like leadership, teamwork, communication, innovation, and many others. They offer best practices from world-class business authors and…
Being Alone When Surrounded by Others The NY Times ran a story this week about tech entrepreneurs living in hostel type places in the Bay Area. It says, ”…
Did you know that … … when crossing the street, you just keep on walking, even though there are hundreds of moving motorbikes? … speakers are often treated like rock…
“It’s taken a while for speakers to get used to that fact that audience members are going to be using their smartphones to tweet their on-stage messages to the outside world. There is still a dwindling minority of presenters who believe that their content is for the exclusive consumption of the people in the room”, says Alan Stevens of in the Media Coach ezine.
The courtyard at American Funds’ Irvine campus serves as more than just a meeting place, according to at least one expert. Jennifer Kahnweiler, executive coach and leadership consultant, strongly encourages employees to get outside during the workday. “Much of our creativity comes when we’re not in the cubicle,” she says.
Kahnweiler, author of The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength, also emphasizes that firms that have opted for more open work spaces must also provide employees with more private rooms where they can work and think in a quiet environment, and encourage workers to use them. While some employees may not want such space, the introverts among us, who make up about 40% to 50% of the population, need those spaces to be productive, she says.
There needs to be enough of these kinds of rooms so that they don’t always have to be booked in advance. At a lot of companies, she says, people have to fight for a conference room because of their scarcity.
We live in such an extroverted, centric world that the people who are the talkers – whether it be in brainstorming sessions or in coaching itself do a real disservice to people when they fill in the sentences. I think that equation we’ve all heard as coaches, is that you should have the 80:20 rule, coaches speaking 20%. That should mirror a lot of conversations you’re having, when you’re trying to get the best out of the introverts in your organization, allow them the dignity of their own rhythm.
I met Jeff Zaslow after a talk in Atlanta several years ago. He was discussing his experiences with my favorite book of his, The Girls of Ames: The Story of…
Actors like Streep prepare extensively to take us into the world of that character. Likewise, introverts often emphasize how much they prepare for meetings, calls, presentations, etc. so that they perform at their best ( a side note: Meryl Streep is an introvert like many actors). Yet, despite careful preparation, you can’t always anticipate what is thrown at you. Handling the moment sometimes trumps preparation.
The sort of coaching that fosters effective innovation and judgment, not merely the replication of technique, may not be so easy to cultivate. Yet modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people’s bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, building a highway through a mountain, constructing a wireless computer network across a state, running a factory, reducing a city’s crime rate. In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require? With a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could. We treat guidance for professionals as a luxury—you can guess what gets cut first when school-district budgets are slashed. But coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
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