Igniting Possibility!

Snow is rare in the southern part of America, so we were thrilled when it graced us last Friday. Here are some photos of my backyard for you to enjoy:

From left to right:

1. Our backyard

2. A neighbor

3. A baby snowman that my son made

Meet Dr Mani, a heart surgeon based in India, who has dedicated his heart’s work to providing heart surgeries to children in India who cannot afford to do so.

A heart surgeon by day, an Internet Marketer by night, Dr Mani is a social entrepreneur who funnels the profits he makes from internet marketing to his heart surgery foundation. It costs US$2500 for a surgery in India. Todate, Dr Mani has performed about 50 such surgeries.

If you are inspired by Dr Mani’s cause, here’s your chance to make a difference. Buy his book “47 Hearts”. All proceeds go towards funding more heart surgeries for the children.

Go to http://47hearts.com this Valentine’s Day. Your heart will thank you.

Exceptional customer service is hard to come by these days. And i believe it’s a global phenomenon, perhaps with the exception of the Japanese. That’s why it’s so refreshing to stumble upon customer service with personality — the kind that makes you smile and lets you experience that you are dealing with another human being, not a robot.

Here’s an excerpt from an actual email one receives when you buy CDs from CD Baby that i absolutely love:

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Wednesday, August 7th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.  We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as ‘Customer of the Year’.  We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Can we emulate this? i hope so! If you have similar pleasant experiences, please feel free to share.

John Lennon’s song from which the above words are taken from is one i sing to myself every end of the year. “And so this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year over, a new one just begun.”

The “and what have you done” part makes me think about all i have done and not done last year — what enriched my soul, what didn’t. What made others’ lives better, what didn’t. A deep question to consider, that. Do we embrace life, with its miracles, surprises, disappointments and fears, or do we push back and try to define life on our own terms? A bit of both, i reckon.

On Jan 1, i was greeted with news that one of my former coaches died on Dec 25 at the age of 59. The first thought that came to my mind were his small child and wife who survived him. Then i thought about our meetings in Singapore and how i chose to take on his coaching, even though it was very hard for me at times. But i learned SO MUCH from Jerome. i learned what my own crap was and how i could confront it and do good for my community. i also learned how to be an impeccable workshop leader by observing Jerome. i thought about how i might have learned more from him if i hadn’t had to move to America but remained in Singapore.

But, such is life. Cest la vie, as the French would say. Some things we can shape and define, others we can’t. i am reminded of the poem about how some people we meet are meant to cross our paths only momentarily while others remain close by. No doubt Jerome belonged to the former.

On another note, i thought about my coaching business in 2009 and how it didn’t do as well as the year before. But it also fills me with anticipation to know in my bones that 2010 will be a better year, in part because i am ready to run a better race. Bah the state of the economy and all its naysayers! i am polishing up my passion lamp, and doing my warm-up exercises! Let the race begin!

May you find inspiration in the start of a new year too!

Here are some statistics from independent sources, completely unrelated to one another, that support the view that business coaching is growing around the world:

• Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at $1 billion.” – Harvard Business Review, November 2004.
• Use of coaching is widespread in UK organisations, with almost nine in ten respondents reporting that they now use coaching in their organization (88%).” – University of Bristol Newsletter, 2005.
• The Australian Institute of Management says 70% of its member companies hire coaches.” – Inside Business Channel 2, July 2006.
• A recent study estimates that 40,000 people in the U.S. work as coaches (work or life) and the $2.4 billion market is growing at a fast-paced 18% per year.” – MarketData Report, 2007.
• Coaching is the second-fastest growing profession in the world, rivaled only by information technology.” – National Post, April 2007.

True story: I was coaching a team of managers at an organization that had about 4,000 staff. It was our last meeting at the end of our six-month engagement. There were 9 managers and their director in the room. I requested that each manager took turns to acknowledge one manager at a time for all the things he/she has done for or with them that they appreciated. It was very moving. Tears flowed…

That is the power of acknowledgment.

What is it about acknowledging someone that pulls down all the giver and taker’s defenses and results in a heart-to-heart connection?

Is it because we are all so busy with doing things everyday that people occur as invisible to us, but when we acknowledge someone, we show him/her that we SEE them, we know their hearts and intentions, we care and that we are in this together…?

For it to work, though, the receiver must resist the natural urge to brush the acknowledgment off, or diminish it by saying “Oh, what I did was nothing”.

And as you might have guessed, whenever a boss asks me that eternal question, “How do I motivate my staff?”, my first response is always, “Have you acknowledged them?” Because that conversation hijacks the mind and goes directly to the heart, and when you connect with someone there, they SEE YOU and they WANT TO be on your team. Motivation is NOT about doing something to your staff; it’s about drawing them out — drawing the gifts that they have that they are still holding in exile, usually without them knowing it…

Are you willing to try acknowledging someone today?

Warning: Don’t let your mind hijack your heart by rationalizing it away. I have heard excuses like “We don’t do that around here”, “It comes across as soft”, blah, blah, blah. All I can say is IT WORKS! And it is the glue that binds teams together as they work towards a cohesive goal.

Did you know you could create pictures with sand? Watch this and believe!