Coach to the Contrary

As you would expect, I reserve book reviews for books I like. Gos­sip by Lori Palat­nik and Bob Burg goes far beyond being wor­thy of a review. It rocked me. It has become a ref­er­ence and inspi­ra­tion which I always keep close at hand.

In short, this is remark­able book.

Within the first four chap­ters, the authors imme­di­ately shock and dis­arm the reader by defin­ing how unbe­liev­ably per­va­sive gos­sip is, start­ing first in our minds and then creep­ing into all of our inter­ac­tions. They opened my mind to look at gos­sip in an entirely dif­fer­ent light.

The topic of gos­sip has rel­e­vance not only on a per­sonal level, but in the busi­ness world as well.

I would rec­om­mend to those of you who are posi­tions of lead­er­ship to adopt this book as a group read. You can sig­nif­i­cantly improve your team cul­ture by adopt­ing the key con­vic­tions and behav­iors con­tained in the book.

Imag­ine your com­pany adopt­ing the following:

• “Avoid destroy­ing those around you by speak­ing no evil.” (Chap­ter 6)
• “Avoid destroy­ing your­self by hear­ing no evil.” (Chap­ter 7)
• “Stop ratio­nal­iz­ing your life away.” (Chap­ter 8 )
• “Judge oth­ers favor­ably by see­ing no evil.” (Chap­ter 9)
• “Avoid the dan­ger of repeat­ing infor­ma­tion.” (Chap­ter 12)

The authors fur­ther chal­lenge the reader to play the “reverse gos­sip game.” The game is based upon the premise that you can tell more about a per­son by what they say about oth­ers than by what oth­ers say about them.

In my coach­ing I have cre­ated an action plan for a team using this game by set­ting up weekly rota­tional behav­ior obser­va­tion and account­abil­ity. Email me if you would like to find out more about what I did and how you can bring this reveal­ing exer­cise to your own group.

Most of the books I read can be eas­ily cat­e­go­rized: “it’s a busi­ness book”…”it’s a cook­book”… “it’s a book about God”… “its a book about how to bud­get bet­ter.” I come across very few books I would con­sider to be uni­ver­sal in appli­ca­tion. These books cut across all dis­ci­plines. They appeal to a larger audi­ence. The lessons they teach can be applied to all dimen­sions of life.

When I dis­cover a book that has uni­ver­sal appeal, wis­dom, AND it comes from the life expe­ri­ences and pain of Byron Katie her­self, well….I want to read it cover to cover.

The book is Lov­ing What Is: 4 Ques­tions That Can Change Your Life, by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell. What do I appre­ci­ate about this book?

First, I love the raw sim­plic­ity. In par­tic­u­lar, I value an author who is able to — from their own con­vo­luted, messed up, chaotic life — draw out deep insights that are not just sim­ple, they are pro­foundly simple.

Sec­ond, this book is very well writ­ten. By “well writ­ten,” I mean that each sen­tence is built upon the pre­ced­ing sen­tence, so you can fol­low the author’s think­ing. There­fore, you do not feel like an idiot because you under­stand their point completely.

Third, I think there is great wis­dom in the premise: it is not the events of our lives, but the sto­ries we hold about these events, that bring us pain. One of the keys to under­stand­ing our own suf­fer­ing is to exam­ine our unex­am­ined beliefs. As the authors say, “Too often it is not the prob­lem that causes our suf­fer­ing; it’s our think­ing about the problem.”

Fourth, Lov­ing What Is does not bom­bard you with a rehash­ing of the “same old, same old.” Rather, the authors dis­till their wis­dom into to four key ques­tions and a “turn­around” (the authors call this “the Work”).

These decep­tively sim­ple ques­tions are:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be with­out the thought?

What I par­tic­u­larly like here is that when you apply “the Work” to a spe­cific prob­lem, it very quickly affords you the oppor­tu­nity to see what is dis­con­cert­ing or upset­ting you in a very holis­tic way.

Once you have responded to these four ques­tions, it is time for what the authors call “the turn­around.” This is con­trar­i­an­ism at its finest!

Turn­arounds are oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence the oppo­site of your orig­i­nal state­ment, to see what you and the one you judge have in com­mon. For exam­ple, “I’m upset with my wife because she doesn’t under­stand me,” can be turned around to “I’m angry at myself because I don’t under­stand me.”

Is that also true, or even truer? Could it be that I don’t under­stand myself, and per­haps that is why I repeat­edly get so upset at my wife? If I don’t under­stand myself, can I see how my wife wouldn’t either? Another turn­around could be “I’m angry at myself because I don’t under­stand my wife.”

I par­tic­u­larly liked the turn­around con­cept because it draws out unique rev­e­la­tions that can show you the unseen pieces of your­self reflected back through others.

There are many other great nuggets through­out this book. I was per­son­ally chal­lenged as I read it, and have found numer­ous con­cepts very help­ful as I have applied them in my coach­ing work.

Erik Wesner’s book, Suc­cess Made Sim­ple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Busi­nesses Thrive is a great read from start to fin­ish. When I picked up the book I imme­di­ately passed judg­ment on it by think­ing, “Oh, another book about how impor­tant cul­ture is, treat peo­ple with respect, blah, blah, blah.”

Not the case whatsoever.

This book engages you in ALL aspects of busi­ness: hir­ing, mar­ket­ing, sell­ing, prod­uct devel­op­ment, learn­ing, man­ag­ing, finance.

The Amish are con­sis­tently among the most suc­cess­ful U.S. busi­ness peo­ple. After 5 years, 95% of Amish busi­nesses are still going, com­pared to more than half of other new busi­nesses which evap­o­rate within the first five years.

Wow.

And we are not talk­ing mak­ing a few belts or trin­kets, sell­ing them at a road­side stand, and call­ing that a small busi­ness. Accord­ing to Don­ald Kray­bill, Ph.D., a senior fel­low at the Young Cen­ter of Eliz­a­beth­town Col­lege, “‘Amish mil­lion­aire’ is no longer an oxy­moron.” The Amish peo­ple con­duct and man­age over 9000 prof­itable busi­nesses across North Amer­ica in trades such as fur­ni­ture mak­ing, build­ing, and remodeling.

I was fas­ci­nated by Wesner’s adept expla­na­tion of their inher­ent com­mu­nity advan­tages and their cor­re­spond­ing road­blocks (such as avoid­ance of tech­nol­ogy and lack of legal protection).

There were two things that espe­cially res­onated with me:

1. Keep your life sim­ple. Main­tain low expenses and live beneath your means, as it will afford you greater oppor­tu­nity to risk and fail. In doing so, you stand a much greater chance of dis­cov­er­ing and liv­ing out your life purpose.

2. When you have earned a rep­u­ta­tion for qual­ity and ser­vice, you can com­mand pre­mium prices.

By liv­ing with and work­ing along­side the Amish, Wes­ner learned one of the great­est busi­ness lessons ever…

Your busi­ness, much like your life, can be a vehi­cle for some­thing more impor­tant and far greater.