New URL for GottaGettaBLOG!

Please note that GottaGettaBLOG! posts from the years 2003 through 2007 will be permanently archived, here, at www.ggci.com/blog, under the heading of "GottaGettaBlog! 2003-2007". But, starting January 2008, blog posts will be posted at: www.ggci.com/blog2.

Furthermore, starting January 2010, new posts will be at:
http://www.ggci-blog.com/.

Please update your bookmarks and automated feeds accordingly.

Thanks!

Coaches and Therapists - How Different?: ICF Conference Breakout Session

While I've been to coaching vs. therapy presentations before, they were always lead by coaches. So I thought it'd be particularly refreshing to hear about it from the other side, as it were. Enter Dr. David Orlinsky, noted professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

Of all of his charts and descriptions offered, this was the one I found most helpful in articulating the differences:

Good set of distinctions, don't you think?

Thanks, David.

Julio Olalla: ICF Conference Keynote Speaker

The opening keynote speaker and Honorary Conference Chair of the International Coach Federation's 2007 Annual Conference was Julio Olalla, MCC, founder and president of the Newfield Network, an international education, coaching and consulting company.

A very engaging speaker, Julio spoke about the 'cognitive schizophrenia' that has developed in the modern world. He suggested that the world insists we focus on our exterior knowing - science, business, objects, the 'real' world, etc. - which we dutifully do. But lost in the process is our ability to connect with our interior knowledge - our hearts and souls, passions and beliefs, hopes, dreams, values, love, loyalty, appreciation for the wisdom of others and the very "cognitive possibilities" that flow from emotion.

The answer is not to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side, or even learn how to ably switch between exterior and interior paradigms in an effort to achieve so-called balance. Rather, he said, the answer is in learning how to unify our exterior and interior knowledge into a cohesive whole. (Coaching, by the way, is one of the few mechanisms available for directly enabling this type of learning.)

Easy? No. Possible? Absolutely.

Our existing 'cosmology', says Olalla - the story we've created for ourselves about how we fit into the world - is externally based:

O --> A --> R

Observers (us) take Actions that yield specific Results. Should we not like the Results, we simply change our Actions and try again. Note that we don't typically consider how we might change ourselves to modify the outcome.

What if we allowed ourselves to change in addition to (or even in lieu of) changing the actions we take? How might we more consciously and intentionally incorporate more of our interior knowing into the "O --> A --> R" model?

Quite possibly, the Actions we'd subsequently take (and want to take, for that matter) would be sufficiently different to enable some completely new Results heretofore unavailable to us.

Easy? No. Possible? Absolutely.

Coaching Next Level Leaders: ICF Conference Breakout Session

Scott Eblin, president of The Eblin Group, and author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, started this session by positing that a full 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months. Some of the external reasons for that include shifts in the market and organizational dynamics, but it's the internal reasons that are more often the cause:

• being afraid to say, "I don't know"
• not listening well enough
• not getting the "lay of the land"
• fear
• not learning the new rules of the position
• the urge to control things
• not clarifying expectations and requirements

In looking for what to do about all this, Eblin interviewed several hundred seasoned executives, asking them two key questions:

1. What do you recommend executives "pick up" and "let go of" in order to be successful in their new roles?
2. What did you "pick up" and "let go of" that resulted in your success in your new roles?

Three key leadership presence elements emerged - personal presence, team presence, and organizational presence - each having 3 key elements to "pick up" and 3 key elements to "let go of":

Thanks, Scott.

ICF Conference 2007

Last week I was in Long Beach California attending the 12th annual conference of the International Coach Federation, along with about 1,500 other coaches from 36 different countries. International, indeed!

In addition to coaches from New Jersey, Colorado, Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Maryland, among other states, I also met some wonderful coaches from Japan, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Brazil, Columbia, France, China, Australia, and New Zealand, as well. It's truly amazing to me how much the ICF - and coaching - has grown over the last several years.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about some of the keynotes and breakout sessions that I thought were particularly interesting, intriguing, and relevant to a wider audience.

It was nice to be away. It's now nice to be back!