But aren’t I supposed to be the one setting the perfect example of how to do it right – all the time? Aren’t I supposed to walk my talk every moment of every day?

That’s what I used to think. That is the “lie” that I still uncover at the source of my exhaustion when I catch myself yet again trying to be perfect – to hold myself to a standard higher than is humanly possible. It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that this is actually what makes me good at what I do as a coach, trainer and consultant. The books I have read, the courses I have taken, and the experience on my resumé have certainly contributed to my expertise, but the real learning has come from my own struggles to apply this “book learning” into the real world – starting with my own.

The truth that I can see in my moments of sanity is that, just as a child learns to walk or talk by getting it wrong in a thousand different ways before they finally get it right, I cannot learn to “walk my talk” without giving myself permission to fail at it – repeatedly. I watched my son struggle single-mindedly for months, falling incessantly and getting more than a few bumps before learning to walk at 10 months. Now at 17 months, each day brings new excitement as we try to figure out which words the sounds he is experimenting with are intended to be. His insistent whining demonstrates his frustration that we don’t always understand him, but this doesn’t stop him from continuing to try. On the contrary, it only seems to increase his resolve to communicate.

It makes me wonder at what point we lose the innate sense of capability and potential we are born with as children and become the “grown ups” who see failure, mistakes, and not getting it right the first time as valid reasons to stop trying.

Talking with my coach last night I recognized that, up until about 10 years ago, my child-like naiveté that I could do anything I wanted if I just kept trying was relatively intact. Then, in the first three years after returning home from living in Japan, I experienced a fall from grace. I met with financial hardship, loneliness, and, after investing a huge amount of time, energy and passion in a business partnership with a close friend, the devastating pain of betrayal and the end of that relationship. It wasn’t until last night that I realized how profoundly I had allowed this experience to change me. Despite my deep passion and need for collaboration and partnership, since that failed partnership experience I have shied away from allowing myself this experience in a deep way on either a business or personal level even with my husband.

As this realization sinks in, I find myself asking, “What would my son do?” He has just learned to climb up on the kitchen chairs by himself. Yesterday I saw him looking at the table, strategizing how to get on top of that as well. I fear that it is only a matter of time before he takes advantage of a moment when my back is turned to make his move. What if he gets up there and falls? Surely it will be painful, but will it stop him from trying again? Experience tells me that it won’t. Just six weeks ago he figured out how to climb out of his crib and was rewarded with a substantial bump on the head. Of course we lowered his crib so that he has not yet been able to duplicate the feat, but I regularly catch him trying to get his leg up over the bars to repeat his accomplishment.

As we get older and master more skills, it only makes sense that we will take on bigger and bigger challenges. Like my son, the higher we attempt to climb the greater the pain if we fall. For many, like myself, the memory of a really painful fall makes us shy away from the edge – but at what cost? Last night I began to get a glimmer of the true cost of my choice to “play it safe”  after my own painful falls on my journey to climb to higher levels. It has impacted my energy, my authenticity, my self-expression, my integrity, my financial stability, my relationships and even my health. The person I was before “the fall” ran her life on the belief that fear and passion were two sides of the same coin and that in going in the direction of my greatest fear, I would find opportunities to express my passions in the most fulfilling and lucrative ways. The results in my life and, more importantly, my joy in the process of getting there, validated this belief. The person after “the fall”, runs around wasting tons of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical energy trying to figure out how to make sure she won’t fall before she will even attempt to climb again. As I write this I recognize that, rather than ensuring success when I do make my next attempt, I am defeating myself before I start precisely because I am not starting at all!

So as I look back at those pesky new years resolutions I can see that I have not been giving them my full effort. I have not really committed to them for fear of failure. But I have a choice to change that. I can and I am giving myself permission to keep failing and to be just as “naively” excited about trying the next time as I was the first. I am going to practice being more child-like – more attached to the excitement and sense of possibility of mastering a new skill than I am to the discomfort of failing, however many times and however painfully I need to fail to get there. Rather than allowing my fear of failure to prevent me from trying again, I am going to accept that failure is part of learning. Like my son analyzes the results of each failed attempt at vocalizing a word, adjusts it slightly, and fails better the next time, I am going to stop expecting myself to succeed at each successive attempt and instead only ask that I “fail better” than I did the last time – that I learn something that moves me forward.

I will keep you posted on my journey of “failing better” and staying excited about it and would love to hear about all of your amazing failures as you work towards making the shifts you desire in your life and work for 2010.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term, swaddling involves using a square blanket and some specific folding techniques to wrap your child in a nice snug blanket cocoon. The power of this technique to soothe babies and help them sleep longer lies in two simple facts: 1) It simulates the cozy, if restricted environment they were so used to living in for nine months in the womb. This familiarity is comforting to them. 2) It prevents them from flailing around and hitting or scaring themselves. Infants don’t have control over their appendages, nor do they even really recognize that those things flailing around and, at times, whacking them in the face even belong to them. Swaddling prevents the unexpected appearance of said appendages by keeping them snugly tucked in near the infant’s body.)

In one of the first weeks after my discovery of swaddling, I was spouting off about my discovery of this miracle tool at my regular writer’s group meeting and the joy of having eight hour of sleep in a row. As I spoke, the eyes of Carrie Gallant, a fellow writer and a specialist in the art of negotiation for women, lit up with a laugh.

“That is amazing,” she commented, “On the drive here today I was just thinking about swaddling and how that is what I need to keep me focused on key areas I need to build my business and keep me from flailing around trying to do so many different things.”

A lively discussion about swaddling as a metaphor for the value of coaching and for the kind of support necessary for success ensued. Here are the main points:

We are like babies. When faced with change, whether internally imposed by our attempt to learn and grow or externally imposed by a change in our environment/circumstances we flail around a lot, fall down, and generally spend more time getting it wrong than getting it right. This is scary, frustrating and exhausting. We don’t understand that the appendage that keeps hitting us in the face actually belongs to us. Having a mentor or coach helps to gently restrain us from hurting ourselves. It wraps us in a cocoon of confidence from the assurance of someone else’s experience so that we can relax and rest awhile before getting back to the inevitable work of growing.

Just like our son, Zen, most people rebel against swaddling at first. Free choice is part of the gift of being human, so it is natural to dislike being given limits. Yet it is precisely by creating boundaries for ourselves, setting limits, and enforcing deadlines that we also create freedom – the freedom that comes from following something through to completion.

Andrea Jacques

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By chance I came upon a job working part-time at the student careers office teaching people how to write résumés and find jobs. I applied, got the job, and discovered that I loved working with these students because they were highly motivated and simply needed a little guidance and inspiration to help discover their career direction. This vocational discovery taught me that my interest was to work with people who wanted to go from good to great, rather than from dysfunctional to functioning.

My second “career crisis” came at 23. As the career development director of a health-care union I had created several innovative programs delivering career-resiliency services to union members and employee-engagement training to hospitals. While more mainstream in organizations today, 16 years ago such initiatives were new and it had taken me close to two years of research, development, marketing and perseverance to get all of our programs up and running. Then, just as we were poised to start making a return on this investment, my whole department was laid off due to budget cuts.

After the initial shock wore off and I had some time to think, I recognized that I had essentially built a successful small business within the organization. Even though I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to get started on my own, this crisis was the impetus for me to become an entrepreneur.

My third crisis at 26 had several issues overlapping that led me to shut down that same business, call off my wedding and head off on my own to travel Asia for six months.

First of all, the majority of my business at the time involved career and re-employment training and coaching. I felt torn between trying to serve the best interests of my immediate clients – the people who were trying to create a new life for themselves – and the interests of the companies who hired me – who wanted these people back and work, any work, as quickly as possible.

Secondly, I had always dreamed of backpacking through Asia and had postponed my dream to pursue career opportunities that I thought were just too good to turn down. This dream was calling to me once again and, although I was engaged to be married in three months, I realized that my dream of traveling was something that needed to be done on my own.

Finally, I had received an offer of a junior partnership from a prestigious international outplacement company. Despite the fact that this was a very lucrative offer and a great honour to receive at my age, my gut was telling me that if I accepted I would be sucked into the “corporate world” of stress, politics, and burnout, never to be seen again.

Despite my fears of giving up my business, my fiancé, and this lucrative career opportunity, I knew that I needed to follow my dreams to travel or I would regret it later. I had no idea at the time that answering this call to travel would bring me to Japan, where I would eventually develop my own systems for helping people and organizations to create work and workplaces that are filled with passion, purpose and meaning.

I have learned that a career crisis is often not a crisis at all. It’s a calling – a calling to listen to your heart, discover your passions, and align with your purpose. We get these cues throughout our lives – intuitions, gut feelings, synchronicities and other messages that are trying to guide us towards meaningful work, vibrant health and a fulfilling life.

When we fail to act on these messages the calls become more insistent in mid-life and generate a crisis so we will stop ignoring them. Whether you are in the middle of a career crisis now or simply wish to prevent one, take the time to explore the messages you have been ignoring. It takes courage to acknowledge these messages and even more to actually act on them. The payoff, however, is worth it. And the price of not listening is high.

Andrea Jacques (kyoseigirl)

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1) Purpose

One of the greatest challenges with retail is that employees and employers alike see its core purpose as making money – and research shows that making money is not the prime motivator for most employees to perform and stay in a job.

The retail clients Kyosei Consulting work with provide amazing products to the world, yet many staff still feel torn because, at the end of the day, they are still just selling stuff. The most engaged retail organizations cultivate a sense of purpose in their people beyond just making money for the company.

Employees who have stayed in retail long-term and are passionate about it always have a sense of purpose that is meaningful to them. They don’t sell clothes; they help people feel beautiful. They don’t sell bikes; they are helping people stay healthy or doing their part to reduce global warming.

They make people’s lives more vibrant by matching them to the perfect music, furniture, or artwork. While your business may have an official purpose statement that is noble and inspirational, the bottom line on attracting and retaining great retail staff is to help them connect with their individual sense of purpose.

2) Movement

What if, instead of trying to reduce turnover, your company were to embrace a philosophy of making sure your staff are here for a good time, not a long time? Consider an employee onboarding program that helped each person create a career plan for when they were going to leave their job, along with specific objectives for how they wanted to grow personally and professionally while they were there.

Topsy-turvy thinking for traditionalists, but how much easier might it be to attract and keep great front-line people if you started to view the purpose of your business as developing people versus selling product? What if you could create an environment where people saw working for your company as a life-changing experience, one where they learned as much of value about self, business, and the world as they did at university – and they got paid to do it?

Shifting your focus to providing employees with the best possible experience and helping them to move on would, ironically, be more likely to increase the amount of time that they stick with and, more importantly, stay engaged in their job.

3) Care

Take the time to care about your team as people. This builds a sense of belonging and creates trust – filling two of the most basic human needs. Several of our clients are training their managers in how to be better coaches for this very reason. With a few strategic coaching skills, and the right framework for understanding how to develop employees, these “caring conversations” often turn into coaching conversations that end up positively impacting performance and engagement. No, you don’t need to greet them with a hug at the beginning of every shift. Simply take the time to find out about their lives.

4) Support

Front-line staff with many of my clients feel that while expectations are high, respect for what they do is in short supply. Rather than assuming that there is something flawed in your staff when they fall short, ask yourself if, placed in the same circumstances they deal with day after day, you would be able to meet your own standards.

Do your people really have adequate tools, training, resources and ongoing support to be able to perform to your expectations? You can’t expect people to fly to the moon with a paper airplane. High expectations together with limited resources and support is the fastest way to create a “work to rule” staff culture where people bring their bodies to work but not much else.

5) Challenge

How do you challenge people when much of the work that needs to be done is basic and repetitive? Sales contests are a common technique retailers use to challenge and motivate their staff, but knowing the goals, interests and passions of your team is more likely to provide growth opportunities that are meaningful to each individual – and therefore more likely to impact performance.

If your employee is a student who loves research, get them involved in researching a new product line. If they love to socialize, then put them in charge of planning a staff party. On a simpler level, create daily mini-contests to make the repetitive work more fun.

Who can restock the shelves the fastest? How many shoe numbers can you remember and retrieve from the stock room at the same time? With a little creativity, the hard costs of implementing growth initiatives for front-line retail staff can prove minuscule compared to the benefits in terms of increased customer service.

At the end of the day, the secret to creating a high-performing retail environment is to take your focus off how you can get more from your people, and ask if you are willing to invest in giving what they need to live up to your expectations – an environment that supports them to work with joy.

Andrea Jacques (kyoseigirl)

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Now I may be too much of a Type- A personality, but “balance” has never been something that excited me, so this trend led me to investigate this topic and eventually to begin writing my forthcoming book, Beyond Balance. The book will examine why balance, while part of the solution, is also a barrier to creating healthier individuals and organizations.

To begin my research, I reflected on my own life and recognized the times I had felt a longing for more balance were not the times I was busiest, but rather the times I was feeling out of sync with my authentic self, my natural style, my strengths, and my vision for my life. When I was aligned with these things, the hard work was energizing and time for family, friends and self all seemed to fit somehow into the flow. This personal experience suggested to me that something might be missing in typical work-life balance programs that focus on efficiency, time management, stress management, fitness programs and support to alleviate caregiver strain.

When I looked at the actual definitions of balance, I discovered the root of my misgivings. Balance is defined as “a state of equilibrium.” It is easy to see why this would be desirable in a time where change is both rapid and seemingly out of our control in our lives and work. But take the definition one step further, and you find equilibrium defined as “a condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced or unchanging system.” This would be great if we had already achieved an idyllic state, but in Canada fully 86 percent of employees report moderate to high levels of work-life conflict. An “unchanging system” in regard this condition is the last thing people want.

I explored further by sending surveys to several hundred people asking what balance meant to them. Not one person mentioned the words stability or equilibrium. They all spoke about wanting more: more fulfillment, more happiness, more time, better relationships, more fun, more meaning. For them, balance was not about keeping things the same. They wanted things to be different, to be better.

The definition of equilibrium also explains why balance is an ongoing struggle and our efforts to improve often cancel each other out. I would go one step further, in fact, to suggest that each individual (and every organization for that matter) is already balanced. Oddly, it was my orthodontist who inadvertently brought this point to my attention. On my initial visit he offered these profound words, “Your teeth are in perfect balance exactly as they are right now. Although you may not like the way they are, they have established a stable equilibrium.”

So the 30 extra pounds you carry around balances the emotions that you are eating to suppress. The six cups of coffee each day balance the lack of sleep you get. Working long hours helps you to avoid having to deal with issues with your children or spouse.

In order to truly thrive, however, people and organizations must find a way to integrate these two seemingly conflicting urges: one toward stability and one toward growth. In order to thrive, we need models that help build foundations for equilibrium by enhancing our ability to initiate change. Rather than struggling to maintain balance, both people and organizations need to learn to step beyond balance and its fear and survival mentality to set their sights on thriving.

Three Keys to Shifting the Balance and Inspiring Innovation

To thrive, people and organizations must learn to shift the status quo and find new ways of doing and being that are more productive, efficient and fulfilling – essentially they must understand the roots of true innovation, a familiar quest for all leading organizations today.  Not coincidentally, the keys for individuals and organizations to thrive on a permanent basis are very similar to the requirements for sustaining healthy, relevant and ongoing innovation.

1) Remember your core.
Whether the goal is thriving or innovation, both individuals and businesses need to understand and stay aligned with their core. A person who becomes a lawyer for the money and status without having a passion for it might achieve short-term financial success, but over the long-term lose in terms of stress, compensating addictions, and a mid-life crisis because of this misalignment.

Similarly, fostering healthy innovation requires an awareness of what is core to the organization and the ability to resist the temptation to enter new markets simply to feed unrestrained growth. Many organizations mistakenly believe that any innovation is good, and fail to examine whether the innovation supports the core of their business. Both individuals and organizations need to learn that just because something is a good thing, doesn’t mean it is their good thing. Learning to thrive is just as much about which opportunities you choose to let go of, as it is about which you choose to pursue.

2) Strategically address needs to align with your core.
Thriving requires being able to strategically address multiple needs simultaneously in a way that aligns with your core values, talents, purpose and vision. We have so many needs that trying to address each need separately can be overwhelming. If individuals and organizations take the time to look at the big picture, assess their varied needs and create strategies to meet them that align with their core, they will use their energy and resources far more efficiently. Rather than cramming in a 5 am workout by yourself, meet your need for physical activity and your value of family by finding ways to make exercise a family activity. In the same way, organizations that take time to look at the big picture and coordinate initiatives will avoid having separate departments working at cross-purposes or duplicating efforts.

3) Consider the common good. We may be tempted to criticize those who “rain on the parade” of new technology or innovations, but we must recognize that no action is without consequences; we owe it to ourselves, and those who rely upon us, to exercise precaution. Rather than getting caught in the struggle of “either/or” dilemmas, those companies and individuals who are able to thrive and innovate over the long term learn how to ask more strategic and inclusive questions that ensure all parties are considered.

4) Don’t stop at the first right answer.
Finally, people and organizations that are thriving and innovative demonstrate tremendous optimism and curiosity. They never stop at the first right answer. They never stop seeking to improve. When they find one way to do something, rather than rushing to implement, they stop and consider, is it really the best way?Even if all of these criteria are met, just for fun they ask, “How else could it look?” The beauty of believing in, and looking for another, right answer is that you always find one.

-Andrea Jacques (aka. kyoseigirl)

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