Making it look easy . . . .

Just built and primed this window frame on our four-season porch. I can do the work but my contractor makes it look easy!

Aligning With Gifts . . . for Success

I am convinced that when a person is using their real gifts, they make things that are hard . . . look easy. This is just the opposite of what happens when I play guitar.

To be fair . . . I have a lot of technical skill with a guitar . . . but playing guitar, and creating music in general, is not one of my gifts. I work hard to produce a good sound with my Taylor 613ce . . . something other musician’s appear to do easily, but . . . for me . . . is a lot of work. One night, I was struggling with a particular section of Eric Clapton’s classic Tears in Heaven—a piece that I eventually would master . . . after months and months of work. I asked my son, who has his mother’s gift for music, if he could help me with figuring out a particularly difficult section. “Sure,” he replied. “I’ll look at it.” The next day—the next day!— he came back playing the entire piece. “I’m not talking to you anymore!” I joked. In truth, I’m used to it. All my kids (6 in number) excel at things that are not my gifts—like art, writing, drama, etc.

When my son plays guitar, unlike his father, people pull out their phones and start taking pictures; or they ask me, “Is he left-handed?” (He’s not.) It is definitely something that comes much easier for him than it does for me. Fortunately, my son doesn’t see this particular gift as something that sets him apart, and above, others. “Talent is as common as table salt,” he quotes . . . when others admire his gift . . . and he’s right. Everyone is gifted.

Here is my Tayler. Love this guitar!

Gifts and Making It Look Easy

Gifts are what people can do easily. While I can’t master a challenging guitar piece without a crazy amount of work. I can read a room of people—even a room full of strangers—with a high degree of reliability. I see patterns I understand behavior. My family has forbid me, due to my ability to recognize patterns, from telling them what is coming in a movie, play, or television show . . . but I almost always know. While having a Ph.D. in human development enhanced this ability, the truth is, I have always been able to do it easily . . . and I can’t even tell you how I “know” except that I pick up on patterns and nuances of non-verbal and verbal cues. Oh, I’m also “on to” the patterns that writers and producers use to throw you off . . . so the viewer won’t predict what is coming. All my family members have such gifts. Things they can do easily that the “old man” can’t do well. Whether it’s grammar, spelling, music, art, theatre . . . truly talent and gifts are “common.”

If you want to learn to play guitar . . . hire my son. Want an editor, an artist, a recommendation for choreography? I can’t point to the kids in my family that have these gifts. You don’t want to hire me to teach you guitar—someone who has learned a lot of technique bur is limited in this area—lest you curtail your own development. Could I teach a beginner? Sure. But if they are gifted in music, I would need to pass them on to someone else very quickly to avoid delaying their development. The same goes for the other areas I mentioned that are not my gifts. In the same way, hiring people for their gifts will make hitting your targets more likely. I see leaders hiring business, finance, marketing, or other coaches then asking them about how to manage people. Maybe that’s okay if this is an area of gifting but most of the time I’d like them to work with someone whose talent and expertise is in human systems.

Giftedness . . . in Coaching/Consulting

This is why I beat the drum for leaders to hire “people-people” when it comes to improving their organizational culture. And the reason why we have spent a lot of time training graduate students and professionals in the mental health sciences to work with organizations and businesses.** Because a lot of business consultants have developed a techniques and tools for helping but, if they are not working in an area of gifts, their outcomes are likely to be poor over time. Poor simply because they are not working in an area of gifting and the things that come easily to others are not their strengths. (For a real-life example, see our post Consultant, Stay in Bounds! In this post we tell the all-too-familiar story of a consultant asked to work outside their area of gifting and the traumatic consequences on an organization). If interested, you can also check out a related post on why Consultants and Clients Shouldn’t be Friends or how Steve Jobs used his talents at Apple.)

Using Your Gifts

So, if you are a coach or consultant, make sure you are practicing within your area of giftedness. (Keep it simple. Focus on your core services.) Don’t let your own ambition, other people’s vision for your career, or the pressure of the organization or leader’s needs make you operate outside your “sweet spot.” Refer to someone whose gifts align with the needs. Hopefully, they in return, will do the same and refer to you the organizations and leaders that you can help with your gifts. Everyone “wins” and success is more likely. Also, be intentional about continuing to develop your gifts. Invest in training, coaching, and other self-development activities to enhance, expand, and deepen your gift. This will continue to make the value you can provide to organizations or leaders increase over time. It will also help to “fill the pipeline” of work and bring you more opportunities.

Hiring for Gifts

If you are an organizational leader, hire a coach or consultant for their specific gifts and do not let them—or let yourself—expect them to work outside their area of expertise. This particularly is a risk over time. A trusted advisor, who has helped in the past, is asked to work on something new. The focus is on the trust. But is this the right person, with the right gifts, for this particular problem or task? Rarely, is this the focus. The leader and coach/consultant simply assume they can tackle a new “problem” . . . and perhaps they can, but at what cost to efficiency and with what degree of risk? Smart leaders find the right tool for the job and smart leaders/consultants find the right set of gifts to maximize success.

In our next post we will offer tips for choosing consultants/coaches that have the people-gift and that are prepared to handle organizational issues.

** Even professionals in the people area need training and identifying their gifts. All “people-people” are not gifted in the same way either. Some are great at analytical thought, statistics, but not good at people skills. Others are great with people but struggle to use the analytical tools to help leaders. Some may be great at strategic planning and poor at conflict resolution. Others may be great at personnel issues but not good at visioning. It all depends on how they are gifted.

Simply . . . Like Jobs. Steve Jobs . . . and Redesigning Apple

Apple logo: Wikipedia

Simplification . . . Yes, KISS** is still good advice!

In his book, Boundaries for Leaders, Dr. Henry Cloud tells the story of Steve Jobs, who—having returned to Apple as CEO, brought clarity to the struggling organization—eventually driving success by eliminating 70% of their models and products. How did he do this? By having a clear vision of what Apple was and was not. Jobs, while sitting in a product strategy session, shouted, “Stop! This is Crazy!” and going to the whiteboard, drew a four-cell chart. “Here’s what we need,” he said—then he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro” across the top of the two columns and followed this by labeling the rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” “Their job,” he said, “was to make four great products, one for each quadrant.

Simple. Elegant. Apple. Great at what it does. Different.

Often times in business we over-think ourselves. We move, naturally, toward more complexity—believing that “more is better,” that complexity or more choices creates more value, right? But experts remind us that focus, clarity, and quality are often driven by parsimony . . . simplicity if you will . . . and may be more important than complexity. (Think of your T.V. remote. Do you really want more options?)

How about your business? Have you driven your strategic planning to parsimony? Have you achieved Job’s level of clarity? If you quizzed your board, employees, vendors, customers, would they all describe what you do in the same terms? Are you clear what and whom you are and what you are not?

One Example

At HSC, we have focused on developing this clarity and created four core products—one for each market segment and product level. This clarification of our vision has driven us to focus on continual development of these products and prevented being “distracted” by pouring energy into new ancillary products that take the focus off what we do best.

For example, a recent conversation with a business owner lead to the discussion of an “opportunity” to develop a product to help private pilots deal with the anxiety of flying—particularly the additive stresses of landing. An interesting, and tempting, thought given our background in mental health, mindfulness, and training. Should we do it? Should we invest energy in developing expertise in this “problem” and create a training to meet this need? Well, focusing on our core model helps get to an answer . . . does it focus on our customers? Not clearly. Is it a service we offer? No. So, unless we change our strategic plan, this is not an opportunity that we would pursue.

Maybe it will help you to do the same.

Like Steve Job’s example, we divided our table into two segments: our market segments and our product lines. Here’s a representation of our model for comparison:

Keynote slide on our four core products.

Notice that we have two primary markets: Organizations (including family business) and Professionals. We also have two distinct product lines: Services and Training. Our four core products then are located in the yellow cells. cross-referenced by these four variables.

What issues are each of our core products focused on improving"?

Organizations:

Human Systems Consulting: There are many ways to implement a successful business plan. In almost all cases, the plans depend on people to carry them out. Our core consulting service is designed to help resolve issues related to the human element. Challenges with culture, motivation, conflict, performance . . . all the human variables that interfere with high functioning.

Team Player Skill Development: People behave as they have been conditioned to behave. Reach out your hand toward someone raised in the USA and they, involuntarily and instinctively, extend their hand toward yours. But that rationale “act” of shaking hands is not universal—it is a conditioned response. villagers in asian countries may not respond in the same way. Employees need training that does not simply “tell them” how to do something different they need to practice. Our training is to start the process of practicing new, functional behaviors that create good team functioning.

Professionals:

Leading Edge* Coaching: Professionals want new ways to practice and pay their bills. But most are “locked into” a health care model dependent on insurance reimbursement. We help professionals develop private practice contracts and to develop a consulting practice through personalized coaching sessions. our coaching process is designed to help identify opportunities, understand how to apply their skills and knowledge to contracting, create marketing plans, develop their fee structure and generally support professionals developing private practice contracts and consulting work.

IMPACT Model*: For professionals ready to jump into contracting and consulting, provide and introduction to the contracting/consultation process we have developed over 20 plus years, to give them a road map on how to work with organizations. We have trained professionals on our marketing/consulting model in national conferences, on-line trainings, and in person workshops.

Well, that’s it. Our four products, one in each quadrant to serve organizations and professionals.

Special note: Interested parties can check our availability for training/services by contacting us. Please note that due to demand, we typically schedule trainings a year in advance. Other services are on a first come, first served basis, and subject to the availability of a consultant at that time.

**KISS acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”