Happiness is natural!  It's a conversation I’m currently having in my coaching community where we are discussing how to put happiness & success together.  Designing our success is more challenging.  Happiness + success is a key life task, one where coaches often dwell to help their clients get clear.

For this reason JT's post below about getting to "DO," getting to ACTION, caught my eye.  Like many coaches, I use assessments.  The "doing" focus of JT's post relates to my own "Activator" strength on StrengthFinder 2.0 (and the earlier version book, Now, Discover Your Strengths) - in my top 5 list of strengths.

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 You know, it started, one step at a time…

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A useful test for Activation for me and possibly for those of us input junkies out there, is this set of questions.

What top three things do you:

• love,
• have the capacity and skill to do, and
• know can bring you both happiness + success?
• have readiness to begin?
• commit to begin, now?

Photo of the 6 sources of Influence tool from the "Change Anything!" book.

 The video below of Diana Wong and me is from the May event, Change Anything, another "DO" focus, from the national book launch.  The Change Anything! book is a helpful resource, as is their on-line, free quiz about how NOT to be blind and outnumbered in managing your sources of influence in making an ACTION oriented change in your behavior.

Getting to DID, in a world filled with possibilities and rich distractions is a challenge, especially for someone like me who like to inhale it all, who is a INPUT junkie (another of my top 5, heh.)

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"Is Reflection an Action Step?"  -- Peter Block

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 This is what coaches in my group mean when we help clients reach in and clarify how they can design their success.  The questions that I'd add to this include: 

• What resources do you need to fully realize your success?  
• What capacity do you have within yourself to affect the changes you may need?
• What capacity do you need from a partner, strategic alliance or to just hire out?  

Your strategic alliances can make all the difference in the world from getting from Initiate to Did.    I'd also add a favorite question from a consulting guru in my circles:  "Is Reflection an Action Step?"  -- Peter Block.

Here's JT's action oriented blog, excerpts: 

• Seth Godin: In, “Linchpin,” he repeatedly reminds everyone to ship! If you want to be recognized for something you have to have shipped something.  In, “Poke the Box,” Seth again prods us to ship things, to initiate.

• David Allen: “Getting Things Done,” is all about organizing your life so as to improve productivity—and decrease stress.  A key tool: Next Actions.  What is a Next Action? It’s something you initiate, start, do, did.

A number of friends have commented about my having ‘started blogging,’ and wished they could as well.  You know, it started, one step at a time.  …

So, let me encourage you: Whatever it is you want to do, whatever it might be you’ve been afraid of doing, whatever your dream might be: Start. Initiate. Do it. Now.

Photo credit: Emil Bacik

via jtpedersen.net

There's a good reason the Liberal Arts continue to be the thinking person's place for developing leaders. Witness, Peter Drucker's take on it, dubbed by John Agno as the first executive coach. --Deb

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Managers [should] draw on all the knowledge and insights of the humanities and the social sciences...   But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results.  ~ Peter Drucker

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This is a helpful excerpt from the Wall Street journal that captures assessments as a foundational part of personal development, realizing your full potential and capacity.  Assessments are key for developing an evidence based approach in a professional coaching practice.  I've taken over 20 assessments myself, sometimes the same ones respeated over decades.  See if you agree with the assessments approach.  Thanks go to John Agno for the post on LinkedIn. 

Excerpted:

... coaches increasingly recognize that personality assessments can lead clients not only to greater self-insight but also to improved relationships.  The tests "can help get to the heart of the problem quickly," says Richard Levak, a Del Mar, Calif., psychologist, who uses them extensively in his practice.  "Too often psychologists operate on their intuition and clinical knowledge, but people are not often as they appear."

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When people take ...tests, their self-awareness goes up and they quickly figure out their strengths and weaknesses.  

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 A test might reveal that someone who appears jovial and self-effacing may actually be insecure and introverted—constantly working to play a role, he says.

via flickr.com

Consider what happens when an introvert comes home hoping to chill after a rough day at work—only to find his extrovert partner waiting to recap every moment of her day.  The introvert gets angry; the extrovert feels hurt.  The therapist or coach tells the extrovert that her spouse needs time alone; she tells the introvert that he needs to make an effort to come out and talk after he has decompressed. 

Introversion & extroversion are actually more complex and nuanced than described here, but the basic concepts still ring true.

What, exactly, is personality?

John D. Mayer, a psychologist and expert on personality testing at the University of New Hampshire, says it is "the system that organizes one's emotions, motives and capacities to think."  Personalities are partly innate, partly learned, he says; we can change them a bit, but it isn't easy.

The Myers-Briggs was developed in the 1940s by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katherine Cook Briggs, who despite little advanced training in psychology, immersed themselves in the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and designed the questionnaire based on Jung's personality types.

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 Self-awareness facilitates change.

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When people take personality tests, their self-awareness goes up and they quickly figure out their strengths and weaknesses.  Self-awareness facilitates change.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2011   via coachingtip.com

After taking over 20 assessments myself, I've vetted the ones I would want to offer to my clients.  My current suite of assessments that I offer to business, leadership and change coaching clients includes, but is not limited to:

• The iWam, the inventory for Work Attitude and Motivation
• The MBTI, basic, Step II and more
• The StrengthsFinder assessment
• A new change, competence and importance assessment for being a "finisher in a world of starters) through a colleague
  
• Through a colleague, the Profiles International Checkpoint 360, the PPI, a DISC personality style instrument, the Profiles XT performance & career match assessment.

and more.   What has been your experience with self-assessment and self-awareness tools?

--Deb

I appreciate Jason's excerpted blog post below. It is the reason the coaching approach I use, focused on using simple short questions, has been effective in cutting into the core of "what's important?" and "what really matters?" 

As Jason describes below, clients, in the fullness of time, evolve and embrace their deepest intuitions and calling in their life and work via an emotional process.  Short, clear coaching questions help clients think, reflect, and fully explore their inner realm, including hidden gems that help surface needed issues, again, in the fullness of time.  Result?  Results!  The ultimate goal is helping clients produce effective results and improved performance, and making sense.

via flickr.com

Excerpted:

February 2, 2011

Personal development is ...an emotional process, not an intellectual one, which means it unlocks unexpectedly. You’re just as likely to go from “understanding” a situation to “understanding” a situation—aka feeling it...—while sitting at dinner or walking out of a movie as you are while talking with your coach. (Unless your coach is really, really good.)

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...I was fired by a client once for refusing to use their overly structured format, which was fine with me. ...Five years of lists, accountability sessions, and train-the-coach programs, zero results.

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...I was fired by a client once for refusing to use their overly structured format, which was fine with me. That was five years ago, and I just got a call from them. Turns out, the coach they’ve had working with their executives hasn’t accomplished squat in the past five years. Nothing. Five years of lists, accountability sessions, and train-the-coaching programs, zero results.

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 You can’t unlock the future you before its time. Go live your life.

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....The only coaching that’s going to work for you now is coaching that is presented on the same emotionally charged level at which you’re living today.

That development plan you’ve got? If you’re overly analytical, nix it. Better: if you can tolerate some ambiguity in your world, create a development document that’s not a plan. Take off the milestones and dates. Just list the stuff you need to work on and look at it periodically. Then go live your life and don’t worry about it. You can’t unlock the future you before it’s time. Go live your life.

Be you now.

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"You will be able to do it."

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Peggy:  New coach, this coaching class FOR coaches fills a need. 

Susan is writing a check for the class at the PCAM conference, photo below.

Here's Nan, below (who wasn't at the emerging design PCAM conference lunch, but took notes on the teleclass group coaching design listed below in a photo.)  Nan's testimonials are about our ride back where I talked about the design of the class.

Above: Car notes by Nan for the January & February Teleclasses.

Below are quotes from the Saturday afternoon PCAM conference class - Coaching as a Business; by Diane Helbig; Diane heard the story. The value is: "You will be able to do it." 

• Not that "I'm going to teach it to you," or "I'll walk you through these processes," not, "here's the steps."

• Rather, when you are done with Deb's new group coaching course, you will be able to do it.

I'd also like to add the value that, with the group coaching, you will be able to tune it for your needs.

If you are interested, contact me at:  DebNystrom@Reveln.com.  I'll send you more information.  Your email will not be shared with anyone or added to any list.

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It only takes a spark, to get a fire going...

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Many thanks to Grace, pictured below.

What FUN to do this!

originally posted in draft form via debnystrom.posterous.com

Photos above:   These two snapshots are the current cover page and blogging comments for the private group blog for the January 2011 class.  Thanks to the groundbreakers in the mini-blogging Posterous workshop in January 2010.  Thank you Grace, breaking ground in the new 2011 January class by trying out Posterous mini-blogging and commenting on posts.

--Deb

Deb Nystrom, of Reveln Consulting blogs about innovation,  leadership, emerging trends, social media, business strategy, news, higher education and fun stuff.  You can learn more about her background & projects on the mothership at Reveln Consulting.