Corporate Coaching

Simplify.

Posted 6/30/09

Simplicity is one thing I value more than ever.  There’s something about clearing out stuff and focusing on basics that makes it easier to create new things – and a lot less stressful.  Here are a few easy steps you can take to simplify:

1.    Take a smoke break, even if you don’t smoke, at least a few times a day.  Head outside and spend a few minutes in the sunshine.  You can simply allow your brain to clear or take one thought with you to work on – but only one.  If other thoughts creep in, gently remind yourself they can wait five minutes until you’re back at your desk.  Take one now if you want; we’ll wait.

2.    Simplify everything within a 5 foot radius of where you work.  Is there anything around you that doesn’t make you feel energized and confident?  Thinking back to my corporate days, I was terrible about filing and was more of a “piler” instead.  If you’re also a “piler”, try putting the piles away where you can’t see them, into a credenza, in a box under your desk or my favorite, in a big hanging file that says “to be filed”.  Getting it out of your space will help you focus on what may be more important.  If you need to, schedule 15 minutes on your calendar to take on the filing.  Then put it away until then.

3.    Unsubscribe to a few emails.  As the economy turned, I noticed much more email traffic coming in.  Makes sense; it’s cheap and environmentally friendly.  On the downside, it creates a false sense of urgency every time your computer dings or your Blackberry vibrates and adds to clutter and distraction.  Take 10 minutes or so and unsubscribe to a few marketing emails that add to your clutter (including this one if you’re not getting anything out of it.  You won’t hurt my feelings.  Simply follow the “unsubscribe” directions at the bottom of the last email you received). 

4.    Incorporate more silence.  A client of mine recently made a commitment to brush up on her French this summer during her commute and realized she enjoyed the silence more.  Absence of continuous audio stimulus can help our brains clear themselves and increase our concentration.  My favorite trick:  turn on the noise-canceling headphones but don’t plug them into anything.  It instantly blocks out unnecessary junk that my brain picks up (like the wooooosh of the cappuccino machine) and focuses me.

5.    Say "No" more.  Make a point of declining a request at least once a day.  We women especially can have our nurturing nature get the best of us at times.  In order to have more energy to give to others, we need to focus on ourselves first.  What will really happen if we don’t take on these extra tasks that clutter our days?  Perhaps you might disappoint another person momentarily.  Perhaps they’ll respect you more.  Regardless, you have more time to focus on what’s important to you and not someone else.

Want more?  Through coaching, many of our clients have learned ways to reduce their stress and simplify.  Call us at (866) 772-8762 for an assessment of your own or your company’s coaching needs.  More simply, drop us an email at info@internalrelations.com.

Better Off Now

Posted 4/11/09

Many things are going right in the business world now.

Yes, you heard me.  Going right.  Yes, we’re in a recession, the inevitable down that arrived after our ups of recent years.  Yes, unemployment is higher than I’ve seen since I’ve been aware of such things and companies with long histories are shutting down.  And, there’s another way to look at this.  In coaching, we are constantly inviting our clients to see a different perspective.

My perspective: the changes of this economy are demanding a new kind of leadership and innovation.  We’re all going to be better off as a result.

Take, for example, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  Here’s someone who’s been given a lot of responsibility now to lead the country’s financial foundation out of the recession. Even people who disagree with his policies and practices admire his leadership skill of building consensus.  Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond, Virginia, Fed bank said so to the Washington Post last week.  “The chair of any committee can respond to comments that challenge his view in ways that essentially inform the committee that the issue isn’t worth discussing.  This chairman doesn’t do that,” said Lacker.  “He takes other views seriously.”  This simple act of listening and considering opposing opinions is driving intellectual debates within the Fed and generating new ideas.  It allows Bernanke to make bold policy moves.

An atmosphere of listening results in discussion resulting in new ideas resulting in consensus resulting in the guts to do new things.  This is a good thing.

What can you do to encourage a culture of open discussion and innovation in your organization?  A few things to consider:

1.    Be open and speak the truth.  If your company is in trouble now, don’t try to hide in your office and solve it on your own.  Invite your people to help.  Howar Behar, former President of Starbucks, tells a story in his book It’s Not About the Coffee about a really bad day a few years ago.  The senior executive team met behind closed doors to discuss layoffs and developed a short list of who was to go.  Then someone left that list on the copy machine.  Behar, after a few, Oh, s___!” moments, called a company meeting for the next morning to tell the truth and be transparent.  He agreed to brief employees daily and got them involved in the process.  The layoffs still happened but his people were a lot more prepared and presumably less anxious about it.

2.    Consider things you wouldn’t have considered last year.  It’s a new marketplace out there.  Apple’s iTunes for years held to the principle of flat pricing; all songs were $.99 each.  Now they’ve changed their tune, so to speak.  More popular songs are $1.29 and older ones range down to $.69.  In return, they gave up their DRM protection, meaning the songs can be used on any device.  My guess is that this isn’t the first time this idea was proposed.  But thanks to some open listening internally at iTunes, they were open to meeting new market conditions.

3.    At the same time, know your values and what you won’t ever change, no matter what.  Southwest Airlines is famous for their “no layoff” policy and their corporate value of holding their employees in high esteem has survived several recessions.  CNN Money reported one flight attendant who in her 13 years with the company was never once concerned about losing her job.  Do you know what your team, division and company hold so dear that they would never change?  Now might be a good time to pull that faded mission statement from 1994 off the wall and revisit what your core values are.   Then see if your practices are aligned with your values.

4.    Trust your gut and do the right thing, even if it’s not common practice.  Not too long ago, it was common for CEOs to be compensated with big bonuses, regardless of performance.  Many are now seeing that “just because everybody has always done it this way” is not a good reason to continue this practice.  Brett White, CEO of commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis recently said no thanks to a $1.7 million bonus, “in light of adverse economic conditions impacting the company, its employees and stockholders.”  (More on that from the L.A. Times).  White no doubt bought himself some trust through practicing what he thought was the right thing to do.


Each downturn in the economy has brought about needed change.   The irrelevant products and services are falling by the wayside.  The fat has been trimmed and we’re all operating pretty leanly now (sometimes even with a few hunger pangs).  I have faith we won’t starve.  As we adjust to the change, think about how your company is better off now than it was a year ago.  Even in the hardest hit industries, I bet you can come up with a few ways innovation and creativity are already changing your company for the better.  Find some ways to encourage this in your organization.  This will eventually feed our hunger and make us stronger again.

For more good news in the economy, follow “jeanneschad” on Twitter in her one-woman quest to highlight great things happening in business right now.

Best Practices in Outplacement
tips from one unfortunately experienced expert

Posted 2/15/09

Back in the 80s, the character “Norm” on Cheers was asked in his job to fire an employee.  He felt so bad about it, he took the employee to a baseball game, entertained him, and finally, after days of fretting, let him go.  The employee had such a good experience with Norm, he told the company and Norm received the unwelcome job of becoming the guy who got to fire everybody, dubbed “The Corporate Killer”.  The next dismissals were done without the entertainment and fanfare and Norm, as was true to his character, soon lost his reputation and was back in his regular job.

This episode was relayed to me by a real “corporate killer,” a senior HR professional with the unfortunate distinction of being involved in over 4,000 layoffs.  For obvious reasons, he’d like to remain anonymous but share some of his experiences.  Thus, we’ll simply refer to him as “Norm”.

Now more than ever, companies are needing their HR teams to efficiently, legally and gracefully downsize their teams in the interest of survival.  As professional as HR folks are known to be, this is still an extremely difficult task and many in HR face their own human emotions as they are forced to deliver this unwelcome news to their employees.  Norm has a few tips as to how to personally cope to make the experience as good as it can be for the employee, the company and for the HR people involved.

1.    Come to grips with the business decision.  Many times, the HR teams are involved in the decision to downsize; often it’s already been decided and is up to HR to execute the company’s decision.  Regardless, take the time to truly understand the business reason and process the company went through to come to that decision.  It will help you deliver the news with more personal integrity and might help you sleep a little better knowing you’re doing this for the survival of the company.
2.    Communicate directly and professionally in delivering the news.  As a person who has been an advocate of employees, it’s an easy tendency to interject your own personal opinions or try to deflect the decision as not yours but the company’s.  At the point of dismissing an employee, your voice is the company’s and statements like, “this was not my decision” or “I don’t agree with this” might win you a few points with the employee but ultimately complicate the message.  Direct, honest, clear communication will help them understand and ultimately accept the decision more easily.
3.    Recognize that they might be better off.  Certainly if the company were to fold and nobody had a job, the market would be flooded with many more people competing for the same job.  Sometimes people also need a reason to make a change from an old habit, even if it isn’t working for them.  Norm recently attended a meeting of a major retailer who was offering employees voluntary buy-outs as the opportunity to create the next chapter in their own personal story.  It might be hard for employees to get this perspective right away but some will recognize it as an opportunity to try a new position, company, industry or lifestyle.
4.    Without being promissory, be an advocate for the employee to help them into their next position.  Likely you believe that most of these people are quality employees and you’d like to see them do well.  Do what you can within your resources through your own network or tools provided by the company to help them land smoothly.
5.    Find your own sounding board.  As a human being, the HR professional having to experience this will go through his or her own process of stress and grief.  Find a safe place to vent and don’t expect to be able to handle it all on your own.  Norm says he tries not to lean on his wife too much and also has a few colleagues in similar positions in other industries whom he can confide in when he’s had a really bad day.  “There’s comfort to any human in speaking with people in parallel situations and sharing stories.”

No matter how it’s done and how much thought goes into the process, there’s no easy way to tell an employee he or she no longer as a job. It’s going to be a tough time.  But HR people can make it through by remember that they, too, are human beings who are doing the best they can for themselves, their families and their companies.  

Internal Relations introduces Smooth Landings, a coaching solution to outplacement.  This program is designed to provide your dismissed employees with opportunities to refocus, gain their confidence and learn the skills needed to quickly land in a new position.  For more information on Smooth Landings, click here.

Stress of Downsizing:
How to Cope When You’re Doing the Laying-Off

Posted 1/30/09


With many news reports today focusing on the economy and resulting job losses, much has been discussed about what happens to the dismissed worker.  Though the stress of losing a job is enormous, the former employee isn’t the only person distressed by the process.  Often people who have guided and supported that employee for years as managers or HR professionals are forced to let that person go, an extremely stressful process for any human with a heart.  No matter how it’s done, the consequences are drastic for the dismissed employee and feelings of anger, fear and resentment may be unavoidable; however, there are things the manager or HR professional can do to lessen the blow for the employee.

1. Provide support.  There are many options available in the field of outplacement to provide employees with skills such as resume writing and interview advice.  Your former employees might also need a resource for the soft skills –clarifying if they’re on the right career path, that it has relevance to the current economy and it is one they can project themselves confidently in.  Outplacement coaching can help employees gain their own confidence and power, better understand what they’re seeking and have the energy to pursue opportunities whole-heartedly.

2. Provide tools.  In addition to the shock of being out of work, dismissed employees are also subject to stress over having to leave many of their well-used tools with the employer.  Laptops and Blackberrys often house contacts that need to be uploaded or even personal pictures that would be missed if lost.  Even access to software programs or examples of past work are suddenly unavailable.  Though you have to protect your company’s security, consider if there are ways to allow dismissed employees to keep their tools – hardware, software, and access to online accounts.  You may find your software vendors are willing to renegotiate licensing to include recently dismissed employees rather than lose that revenue entirely.

3. Highlight the value the employee has been to you.  If this is a true economy-driven layoff, chances are you will very much miss the contribution of the employee.  People often have a hard time recognizing their own talents so remind them why they’ve been such an asset to your company and what you think they’ll contribute to another organization.  Calling out their strengths may help them see the light at the end of the tunnel.

4. Remember who you are.  You’re likely a caring professional who has taken great pride in the people you’ve supported. It’s impossible not to feel some pain of your own when you’re forced to let them go.  Remember that it takes courage to make tough decisions or carry them out.  By doing so, you’re allowing the doors to stay open, saving the jobs of countless more people.

5.  Take good care of yourself.  It may seem selfish to think of yourself at a time when dismissed employees are facing such enormous challenges; however, when you ensure your own needs are met, you have more energy to take care of others.  On days you know you’ll be dismissing employees, schedule something that evening you know will re-energize you.  Find your own support from colleagues, friends, and family.  Recognize this is a difficult time for you as well as the dismissed employee and take measures to ensure you’ll be at their best and have the most to give.

Internal Relations introduces Smooth Landings, a coaching solution to outplacement.  This program is designed to provide your dismissed employees with opportunities to refocus, gain their confidence and learn the skills needed to quickly land in a new position.  For more information on Smooth Landings, click here.

The Power of Choice
Posted 9/16/08

Trapped.  Cornered.  Up against a wall.  All of us have felt this way at one time or another.  You might want to move to a bigger home but can’t sell your house without losing money in this market.  Perhaps you want to explore other job or career options but don’t want to think about starting over somewhere.  This week, I wanted to upgrade to a new Blackberry but have to wait until I’m my contract expires next month or pay a penalty.  With all of these situations, we seem to be helpless, stuck, or at somebody else’s mercy to get what we want.  However, what if what we really want is exactly what we have?  We don’t lower our standards; we simply open our options.

A common result of coaching is shifting perspective.  People who have been looking at a situation can shift the angle by which they’re looking at it, perhaps examine a filter through which they’re looking at it, and suddenly the situation looks different.  It’s a pretty powerful process and one that helps us get out of “stuck” and into “choosing”.  When we’re truly stuck, we have only one choice and it’s presumably not an attractive one.  Most of the time, though, we do indeed have choices and decide which choice works best for us.

Take our examples above.  Look carefully and you’ll see that all of these “stuck” situations are actually choices.  If somebody wants to move to a bigger house, some choices are:
a) sell now, which might mean losing money,
b) delay your move and perhaps be inconvenienced by lack of space
c) put the house into the rental market and rent a bigger house until yours sells
d) move to a different area
e) go condo instead of house
f) do nothing at all

What other choices does this person have?  By simply brainstorming choices, you shift from being a victim of your circumstances to chairperson of the board of your own life.  By choosing, you are in control of what works best for you. 

I coached somebody recently who was really hating his job but felt very stuck due to family responsibilities.  He had a mortgage to pay and his family required his income to sustain their current way of life.  He had explored other jobs he thought he might like more but didn’t pursue them if the pay wasn’t equal or more.   In the meantime, he suffered through his job, burdened by a high level of stress, in order to give his family what he thought they wanted.  As we identified this in coaching, he began talking to his wife and realized he’d made assumptions about her choice.  It turns out she would rather live off a lower budget, consider downsizing their house and cut back on vacations in order to have more of him.  With his family’s support, my coachee was then free to choose a lower-paying, less stressful job in order to have his mental and physical health.  The benefit he could see from his peace of mind made the other choices of newer car and annual European vacation seem a lot less attractive.

Short Exercise

Think of where you might feel stuck in work or life.  The following exercise might help you see your options.  In just a few minutes, you can change your perspective and see where you have the freedom to choose.

1.    First, write down how you feel truly stuck.  Be as specific is possible.
2.    Ask yourself, “Am I truly stuck?”  What are three choices you have right now with your situation? Write them down.
3.    Are there any more choices?  What might somebody else choose (perhaps somebody who’s brave, willing to take risks for payoffs or somebody who’s creative)?   Write these down.
4.    Are any of these options good choices for you?  If so, circle or star them.
5.    Knowing you have all of these options, what is your choice now?

Being at choice releases us from the cages we create in our minds.  By simply looking at the situation as a series of options, and not as a good or bad situation, we can then pick the best option for us right now.  As circumstances change, the choice may change, and you have the freedom to choose again.  Even though you can’t always see them, you have countless choices for almost any situation.  To make them visible, all you have to do is be aware that you are at choice.  Being at choice means the power to change a situation is indeed power we hold within ourselves. 

- Jeanne Schad

Quieting the Chatter
Posted 9/11/08

It’s 6:15 am on 9/11 and I’m watching memorial services for the victims of 9/11.  Seven years of perspective and still this day will always be a contemplative one for me and I’m sure for many of you.  This morning as I watch the coverage, my experience of memorializing the occasion is interrupted continuously by the commentary of the reporters.  Just a few moments ago, a bagpiper was playing "Amazing Grace" at the Pentagon and I was caught in the deeply soulful experience of the music. Suddenly, it was interrupted by the news anchor commenting about how beautiful the music was and just as suddenly, the beauty was gone.  It made me wonder, do we ever do this to ourselves?   How much of our own experience and emotion gets interrupted by our mind's chatter?  We seem to have a need to immediately interpret, analyze, compartmentalize and put away.  We shy away from the experience and move too quickly into, “What does this mean?  What is this?  Where do I file this away?  How to I get rid of this bad feeling as soon as possible?”  What we miss is the necessary experience itself.  Sometimes we have to live through it, internalize the experience and simply let it be.  To deny the experience denies us a big part of living.  What possibilities open up if we quiet our own internal commentary and simply experience the moment?  For one, I can get the joy of living, even living through painful memories.  The alternative is to experience life a little more numb, which makes a little pain seem not all that bad. For another, I get the peace that silence of the mind brings.  When the mind shuts down, the spirit has room to speak and is almost always the voice I want to hear more than the mind.  The constant chatter of the mind, though, is constantly interrupting the spirit, trying to bring it on logical, left-brain terms.  The mind often squashes the spirit’s fabulous creativity with things like, “That’s crazy!  That’s not reasonable!”  Right now it’s telling me, “Don’t put that on your website!  That’s too personal.”  If you’re reading this right now, you know which voice won out.

Throughout today, if you feel sad, reflective, perhaps a little emotional, please allow yourself to be that way.  I’ll do the same.  And when you feel like pausing for silence, please gently nudge your mind to do the same.  Perhaps our collective minds couldn’t prevent the first 9/11 but our collective spirits, if we listen to them, might help us wise up and avoid another tragedy.  

I wish you a thought-provoking, contemplative, peaceful 9/11.

- Jeanne Schad

Making It Real
Posted 9/4/08

In each work environment, there are unique expectations. Just like snowflakes or socks in my drawer, no two are alike. What worked at company X could get you fired at company Y, even though both hired you, perhaps for the many of the same reasons. Companies sometimes ask you to mold to their environment to a certain extent to ensure your success there. Some of that is easy to give up. Sometimes you mold so much out of character, it’s hard to bounce back.

When I was growing up, a neighbor kid had a Stretch Armstrong. Stretch was a doll whose arms and legs could expand two to three times their normal length, then slowly draw back to their original shape. Over years of stretching Stretch, the gel inside him would harden. His arms and legs would no longer bounce back. Stretch stayed stretched into a morphed, disfigured character who wasn’t much fun to play with anymore.

Many people are stretched out of shape by their professional identities and responsibilities that come with it. Career choices we made 10, 15, 20 years ago force us to stretch our current selves back into forms and shapes we took long ago when, in fact, we’ve simply outgrown them.

A coach friend recently told me of an exercise she did with a client. She asked him to write his full name on a sheet of paper. He did as instructed and looked up at her for the next instruction within seconds. She then told him to change hands and perform the same task. A few minutes later, a scribbled version of his name appeared after much careful laboring on his part. The exercise illustrates what it’s like when somebody is placed in a job that’s not a good natural fit. Certainly the job can get done but with much more effort expended and probably with not as high of quality as can be done with the right person.

So how much are you willing to give up of your natural self to fit into your company’s mold? Are there specific areas you constantly bump up against that you know will strike up that inner conflict? The better question might be what are you NOT willing to give up for any job, no matter how much money?

In the past few years, much has been said of corporate accountability and responsibility. Truth is, corporations are neutral organizations; they’re a set of a papers and a tax status. Only the people within them can act and do so based on a combination of the company line and their own moral character. Certainly the case can be made that there would be no need for regulations such as those imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley if people had been less willing to mold themselves to their corporate environment and more attuned to what they knew to be right and wrong.

Think back to your career; if you’d had put your own instinct above the company line, what things would have gone differently? I recall working as an ad agency exec for a car account and holding the agency stance that the logo did not need to be bigger on an outdoor billboard. Anybody who’s worked in advertising knows this is the quintessential client-agency debate: clients always want the logo bigger, art directors want other images to balance it. I took the initial stance, as I felt was my job, to “tame” the client and influence to keep the logo small. I stood in front of a group of clients going through bullet point by point as to why the logo needs to stay the same size. At the end of the discussion, I was invited by a client to take a drive with him by the billboard. We did so. Much to my amazement, I was wrong. Based on where this billboard was placed 40 yards off the highway, the logo was indeed too darned small. The creative looked awesome but truly, I had to squint and nearly rear-end the car in front of me to determine who it was advertising. Had I trusted my own gut when I looked at it and not been so quick to tow the company line, I would have saved us all some effort and saved myself some credibility. My lesson was to listen to my own voice first and then to the voice of my company.

What would be some of the benefits of more of the real you in your work? How might it be easier to interact with your supervisor? Your peers? Your subordinates? Most importantly, your clients? You have one thing in common with every person you deal with every day: you’re both human beings. Each of us has a natural way of doing things and an adopted, harder way, like writing your name with your non-dominant hand. Are there ways you can show up in your work more naturally and more in line with who you know yourself to be?
- Jeanne Schad, President and Founder, Internal Relations

Why coaching in a slowing economy?
Posted 6/17/08

The end of second quarter is only a few weeks away and we’re all bracing for the release of corporate earning reports. My guess is that many will have the same adjectives: “down,” “less-than-expected,” and “declining.” One SVP in real estate told me this week that the first round of budget cuts “hurt” and the next round would, “hurt really badly.”