Hanna Cooper

Five things I learned on my mini blog-vacation

"Be the change you seek in the world" - Gandhi

 

So, I write a post about change, and then what:  I go AWOL on you, my people.  What's the deal?

In case this has been keeping you up nights (though I'm guessing and hoping it hasn't), I've been spending my time in the past two and a half months working on my business, this business.  What I do, how I do it, why I do it, and who it's all for.

(In fact, if you are a frequent visitor to this site, you'll see that some things have changed around here.  Please take a look around  - I'd love to hear your feedback: what do you like, what would you like more of?)

And I've learned quite a bit that I think can be applicable to you all as well, my dear readers.  So, without further ado, here are my top 5 learnings from my blog vacation (AKA busting my rear on business development):

1) Learn or stagnate.  I love to learn - I always have.  But I haven't really been sure about what steps I needed to take to grow my business to have the impact and make the difference I want to see in the world.  I love what I do, I love who I work with, and the changes my clients make, and there are ways to do even more of that and still honor who I am and how I want to run my business.  Cool stuff.

2) Ask for help.  I tell clients all the time that asking for help is a leadership skill.  Guess what: this applies to me too!  When I don't know how to do something (like grow my business), it's OK to ask for help.  I've know this one before too, but I guess it was time to re-learn it (see #1).

3) People are really awesome.  (OK, I'm cheating.  I already knew this one too!)  Really, people are amazing.  When I reached out and asked for help (see #2) from colleagues, other business owners and clients, their enthusiasm and generosity blew me away.  Not only that, but the information was critical in helping me improve this website, what I offer and how I talk about my work.

4) Cut to the chase.  We all get very attached to our "stuff", our way of doing things, our language.  Even though I've been told I write well, I was getting all tongue-tied and fancy-pants about how I describe my work.  The feedback I got from my clients helped me cut through the coach and OD organizational development (thanks, Pam!) speak and get down to what really matters for the people I want to serve: you.

5) Have more fun!  I've described that my website has worked like a parking lot: my reserved parking space on the web.  And funny enough, it became just that: a pretty dead space without a lot going on.  But get ready, because I've got plans to turn this lot into an awesome carnival/street fair/amusement park where we can have some fun, take some risks and do some cool things together.  How does that sound?

So, let's get this party started!   As a result of all this cool learning, I've developed a practical and action oriented e-workbook for you to get some traction on your own path and journey.  You can access it by signing up for regular updates from me in that pretty blue box in the top right hand corner.

In the comments below, I want to hear from you.  Let me know:

1) Which of my five learnings is your favorite? 

2) What's your greatest learning of the past two or three months?

Life's work

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it - Buddha

I didn't discover my life's work as a professional coach easily or overnight; if anything, coaching as a profession found me. 

Ten years ago, I'd thought I'd found my calling as a supervisor of public health education programs. 

What I loved about supervising - and was really good at - was clearing the path so that my staff could best use their own gifts and talents.  And, I loved watching that happen, knowing I was assisting in their learning and growth.

Then, in 2000, I heard about this thing called "coaching": it sounded kind of cool.  So I did an informational interview with the sister of a friend of mine, who was one of the first certified coaches in my state.  As she talked about what she did and who she worked with, I thought:  That's it!  That's the name of what I'm already doing!

And then, I got scared.  In fact, so scared that I put off getting professionally trained as a coach.  For four years. 

I was too busy, I couldn't make the time in my schedule, I had too many other things and people to attend to.

Of course, I eventually did take the training - during one of the craziest, most complex times of my life.  So much for excuses.  And I haven't looked back since. 

I've found my life's work.   And, while I give my heart to it, the biggest gift is that my work also gives back to me in ways I never thought work could do.

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What's your work?

How do you give your heart to it? 

Getting Messy

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.  - Albert Einstein

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.  - Abraham Lincoln

Last Fall, I was working with a team that had hit an impasse: they'd accomplished some of their goals with coaching, but still hadn't quite dived to the depths of their core stuff.  Circling, perhaps, but not landing.

Then the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan.  Out "it" came, like someone had finally let the raging tiger out of the cage.  Anger, frustration, blame, defensiveness, and finally, a shut-down.  The coaching session ended without resolution, or a clear way forward.  This happens sometimes in change - that we have to step into the chaos in order to find our way out of it. 

However, in thinking about their system over the next few days, I realized that as their coach, I had missed an opportunity to name and call out issues.  I admitted my failing to them, corrected it (!) and then brought them back to some core work they'd previously done.

When I next met with them, a month later, there'd been a shift in the team: this time, expressing themselves - even in frustration - led to new learning, understanding and opportunity.  A way forward.  The final sessions I coached them through brought them to truly a new place as a team with increased trust, respect, and functioning.

What I took from this experience was:

• It takes great courage to step into chaos - whether it's your own, or someone else's.  Courage not know, not to know where it's going: to be lost, at least momentarily.   This is the place of great learning, if you are willing to notice.

• Willingness to step into the messy stuff can lead the way into something new.  This wasn't the first time I've been offered this learning - wise colleagues of mine gave me some feedback some years back about my own performance:  "When you get messy, you give us permission to get messy, Hanna." 

• Breakthroughs come not from being perfect or knowing the answer or the way forward all the time, but from sticking in there, through the mess, anyway.   Rather than seeing it as failure, to see the breakdown as an opportunity to review, rewind, reposition, reboot.

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What if your failure was an opening for change?

How might you welcome "mess" as a sign of change?

State of Learning

"We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As part of my natural state of learning, during the past two years I've been expanding my individual leadership coaching practice to also include coaching teams and systems. 

I'm excited to announce that I'll be taking a new step in my own development in team and systems work by undertaking a process to become certified in organization and relationship systems coaching (ORSC) during the next year.

As part of the certification program (which I will formally start in October), I am looking for new or established partnerships (work, couples, or family), teams and systems to practice with as I hone my skills.  Since taking introductory training in this model in 2007, I've been using this model heavily in both my individual and team coaching work, and have seen amazing results with it.

Since I'll be in learning mode, I'll be offering **special reduced rates** for this work, and would greatly appreciate any referrals you can make! 

If you, your team or organization or others you know might benefit from this type of work, please contact me!

**UPDATE:  I still have a limited number of slots open for this opportunity! 

Whether at work or at home, relationship systems coaching can help create clarity, promote more effective communication, and ultimately produce greater results through improved relationship systems of teams, families or groups.

If you are ready to unleash your best in your personal or professional relationships, contact me!**

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How can you nurture your natural state of learning?

Spring's reminders

Here in the northland, where I live, trees are just starting to bud, early flowers are opening, and birds of all kinds are returning.  Spring, and its metaphor of renewal, hope and possibility, is everywhere in my world -- in the world outside my window, and in other worlds as well.

After many years of neglect, my garden is getting some of my attention again.  Working the soil, pulling up weeds and overgrown plants this past weekend, I noticed how I can easily I can create a new vision of beauty, despite absence of much recent consistent tending.  It's as if the garden has waited patiently for my return, and I feel welcomed by it again. 

I've also recently been putting more focus on tending my garden of friends (those beauties!) also somewhat neglected during the past few years tending young children, a career change, accompanying a dying parent.  Here also I have found much forgiveness, tenderness and response in these relationships with just a bit more tending on my part.

Even with myself, with my tendencies to sometimes put everyone and everything else first, I am finding that I am responding well to a new degree of attention, tending, and watering.  After much tilling of my own soil, seed planting, some tectonic plate movement, my body and spirit welcome the renewal of my care.

One of the lessons of 2008 for me was "Begin Again".  When we've strayed from the path, perhaps woken up in some ditch, we can start over.  It can be as simple as that.

Spring is the ultimate reminder of this -- to begin again.   Everything that was old, dead, drab, will begin again -- anew, fresh, renewed, growing.

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Where would the concept of "begin again" serve you in your life?

What is yearning for your attention?

How are you beginning anew today?

I Heart My Job

I love my job.  I really do.  People call me on the phone to figure out what they really want to be when they grow up.  How cool is that?

I sometimes feel like I need someone to pinch me: do I really get to do this work?  (Yes, Virginia, there apparently is a Santa Claus, and it's called Living Your Purpose.)

One of the best things about the work I get to do is connecting with people, from all walks of life, with their own unique set of dreams and goals, but who somehow sense there is something more for them out there. 

Whether it's in a training I'm conducting, during a sample coaching session, or out in my personal life, hearing how people are living their own purpose, regardless of the words, and however it's expressed (from how they raise their kids to creating new and innovative programs) inspires me to continue on my own purposeful path.   It's a cool dynamic loop for me.

So, I guess that it's not only that I love my job, but also that I am awed, inspired, and yes, love, the people I meet and sometimes work with.

For me, it couldn't get much better than that.

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What do you love about what you do?

How is what you do related to your sense of purpose?

Happy, Happy 2009

Why, hello there, all of you!

Yes, despite all best efforts to issue this blog to dust, I'm baaaack!

And, I have all intentions of not forgetting about you, dear Internet, this year.  In fact, you're back on my list! 

As I wrote waaaay back in 2008 (ancient history, huh?), I spent a good bit of my energetic resources this past year attending the CTI Leadership program... an amazing, life-changing experience for me, that's really brought me to a new level in myself and my own leadership.  More to come on that.  Lots more, in fact.

So, when I say "you're on my list", Internet, what I mean is that this blog is one of my projects, one of the ways that I believe I can really fully live out my purpose as a leader (which, in its current iteration, is about being an unconventional ambassador for change).

Stepping up my writing on this blog - so that it's a better resource for my coaching clients, so that it's a more powerful way of connecting with non-profit and government leaders, so that it might even shift something out in the world - is one of my goals for 2009.    I actually have a secret (oops, perhaps not so secret now) dream that these blog posts might someday find themselves edited into some type of book - what do you think?

What's on your list, Internet, for 2009?  What is the world waiting for you to do, say, be, this year?

Where, oh where, has this little blog gone?

Has it really been four months since I updated this site?

Oops.  How embarrassing.  Sorry, Internet.

Wow, hardly can be calling myself a "blogger", now can I? 

Well, gentle reader, it has been four months since my last post.  The dog didn't eat my homework; nope, I've just been darn busy.  Doing what, you may ask? (Or not.  But I'm going to tell you anyway.)

• Attending the Leadership program from Coaches Training Institute to strengthen my own leadership skills - in my life, my work, in the areas I want to make a difference in.  I've already learned a ton more about myself, met some awesome peers and colleagues, and am stepping more into who I am authentically as a leader.  Not bad, huh?
• Stepping into more team coaching and training work - fun, challenging, edgy!
• Collaborating with new partners - great to be learning with others in this way.
• Coaching, coaching, coaching!
• (and, trying to exercise more, strengthening my spiritual practice, potty training my 3 year old, making art with my 5 year old, reading books for pleasure and learning, and going out on dates with my husband.)

I've been saying that I've been hitting my "sweet spot" lately - meaning (indulge me here: I'm not a tennis player) that I'm swinging and really knocking it over the net.  I'm doing the work I've dreamed of doing, that I'm meant to do, and I'm apparently doing it well. 

To wit:  I've been getting feedback from others on the order of:  "wow, you're really good at that."  "you have a way of saying things that really provides clarity."   "will you please take on this gigantic project for us, and we'll pay you well for it." 

Um, gosh, OK.  Or, really, more accurately: thanks, Universe.  I owe ya one!

I'm off to California next week for Leadership Retreat 2.   The rest of May is crazy busy as well, but I'll try to ignore you all less... and write more. 

Or better yet, come play with me out here!

-- How 2008 going for you so far?

-- What's the "sweet spot" you're currently hitting?

When things come tumbling down

I'm going in lots of different directions today - literally and figuratively. 

With the impact of yesterday's Minneapolis I-35 Bridge disaster - which happened right here in my geographic community - looming large in my mind, I'm grateful for the safety of my family and friends, concerned and sad about the losses that have happened and will be growing as the recovery process continues, and proud of how my community has responded heroically to such an incredible event.

I was across the country yesterday when the bridge collapsed, and had a bit of panic when couldn't reach my husband by phone immediately (how we have trained ourselves to expect the instant and constant possibility of contact!).  Irrational thoughts raced through my mind in the 10 minutes it took for me to get a hold of him by phone.  Watching unbelievable images on the TV, I couldn't immediately place which bridge it was that had collapsed.  My mind sped through what I knew to be my family's schedule yesterday, trying to figure out where they might be.

All's well in my household and in those in our immediate circle, but that won't be true everywhere.  Within and beyond my community, tragedies - large and small - hit everyday.  With this event as a reminder, I'm struck - as I notice myself getting nervous today crossing any bridge in this city of many, many bridges over water - of how we lure ourselves into comfort, and fear, about our permanency, about the preciousness of our time here. 

Rather than fearing the many potential dangers that lurk anywhere at any time, how can we more fully claim, embrace and dance with the beauty and magnificence in small and large experiences everyday?

We have no idea when one of life's bridges will come tumbling down for us or those we love.  How can you embrace gratitude and wonder today?

Days don't stop

"Have you noticed, Mom," my 4-year old son said the other day, "that the days don't stop?"

(Oblivious to time having stood still on this blog for the past two months...)

Who knew I had a philosopher in the backseat of my mini-van?

Yes, my love, the days don't stop, no matter how much we may want them to - or even just slow down, last, linger. 

Or actually, they will stop eventually for us all - but not usually when we want them to or expect them to. 

Frankly, our opinion about whether we like the days we are having or not having doesn't stop the flow.  Days will keep coming, until they don't.

Last month marked my entrance into my 40's.  With luck, I'm still slightly less than 1/2 way through my life, if one half of my genetic make-up wins out over the early deaths on the other side of my gene pool.

Watching my kids grow, noticing how more quickly the seasons seem to come and go, pondering what on earth it might mean (or not mean) to be 40, I'm completely aware of the time I have, and don't have, to do whatever it is I'm here to do.

The days don't stop - so what are you waiting for?