Keep The Focus On Yourself

June 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Colleague Ruth Ann Harnisch shared some great words of wisdom recently in a post called U Do U.  She reminded me of one of my favorite book titles “What You Think of Me is None of My Business” by Terry Cole Whittaker.  It’s also one of my favorite mantras. 

It’s been a difficult one to master, for sure.  For me I think it’s because early conditioning followed by nursing, my foundational learning and career, caused me to be really confused at a young age about what “caring” means. Focusing on myself was selfish and to be avoided – until I finally learned the ‘put on your own oxygen mask first’ principle.  Clearly a depleted human has little to give, whereas one who is full to overflowing, fulfilled, has lots to contribute.  Caring from that place is a lot richer.

Lawyering – the ‘you’ve come to me because I know better than you about this matter’ training further distorted the definition into “I care, therefore I must tell you [advise] what to do.’ For the most part that worked, but it wasn’t very satisfying.  Would much rather see people empower themselves and avoid legal (and other) problems!  

Fortunately, coach training certainly helped change both those viewpoints.  There is only so much I can do to begin with.  Secondly, you’re the only one who can actually change your life – and I get to revel vicariously in your victories! I can be of service, but even in service others have to exercise some self-help and accept what you have to offer – or not.  It’s their choice always, and there’s not much I can do about their choices.  I can listen, lend support, provide ideas, and give feedback, but the choices and actions someone takes after that (as well as the consequences) are theirs alone. And I can “want for” your greatness.  Which I definitely DO!  Playing small doesn’t do you or the world much good.

So, I care about you without wanting to change you (though I’m willing to help if you want it -and it can be on your terms, not mine, I’m more than okay with that – even if I’d have chosen a different result).  I didn’t create this universe and I’m not running it, so often the result WILL be something other than what I had in mind – ah, the multitude of possibilities.  And that’s not only okay, actually it’s good.  And it reminds me that the point of power for myself is within me – how I shape my own attitudes, perceptions and choices.  What I let in and what I keep out.  True for us ALL.

And I can care what you think without feeling like it’s a mandate to change myself if you think differently or don’t agree with my choices.   But that’s not how I’ve had it wired up most of my life.  Thank God we don’t learn less.

That mantra “what you think of me is none of my business” puts it all in perspective, along with its corollary – what I think of you is none of your business.  Sounds kind of callous, but maybe it’s really the best kind of caring … What we think about is our business.  And it’s good to focus on what we’re thinking about, and what we’d prefer to be thinking about – because THAT is the place from which we create!!

How would your life be different if you kept the focus on yourself, worked on your own fulfilment, chose to be happy (as opposed to any other feeling you indulge from time to time), and gave back from a place of feeling fully contented with your life (no matter what anyone else said or did)?  If you want help with that, let me know.  I’ve been around that block and am happy to help you choose what you want from your own array of possibilities.  That orientation for service is the best way I can demonstrate I care.

Wishing you the best – however YOU define that.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Coaching, Living Your Best Life Tagged With: caring, Contribution, fulfillment, Keep the focus on yourself, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Self-care, Terry Cole-Whittaker

Increasing The Power of Feminine Energy on the Planet

May 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There is an amazing legacy project that starts today and runs for the next week – that you can access from the comfort of your home.  It’s called the Inspiring Women Summit.

The Summit is directed toward women for sure – as the primary demonstrators of feminine energies on the planet - in an effort to support them in greater use of the power of the feminine viewpoint and approach in the world.  And we here at Creating Legacy support that, because we want to see the power of the feminine viewpoint get stronger in terms of the way the world works.  Cultivating and nurturing a culture of contribution – living a legacy approach to life – certainly embodies that. 

However, while the word feminine – just check the dictionary – is most often defined with sex and gender characteristics, feminine and masculine (for that matter) are gender neutral terms.  Each of us possesses both feminine and masculine traits.  A great comparison of those qualities is available here (you may have to adjust the items under the proper columns depending on how it shows up on your computer, but you can download the Google version into Word). 

It is really how culture and sex role stereotypes have influenced you that will determine how comfortable you will be with expressing the feminine or masculine qualities you have access to.  And the context you are operating in will also be an influence – or a challenge to rise above and choose to use a different tool than the expected.

When I was training to be and practicing as a Registered Nurse, most nurses were female.  Not all.  But despite the highly scientific and technical aspects of the nursing profession, the fact that it was founded on caring put it squarely in the feminine domain and thus only a few strong guys were attracted to it.  That is not so true anymore.

Unlike my female predecessors and pioneers in the law, who may have been one of 5-10% of women in their law school classes, when I went through law school, my class was about 30% female.  Today, in both medicine and law – both previously the provinces of men – women make up about 50% of the graduating classes.  The focus on reading, research, writing, oratory and advocacy skills that make up legal education are clearly “something girls can do” … well, and thus do well in practice, too.  But historically, culturally, lawyers were men – not because women were not capable.  Even the skill sets of the law might be considered feminine in nature when compared with the hard physical labor of construction or combat jobs …

I’ve had two previous careers that gave me a lot of opportunity to consider the difference between a feminine and masculine approach to the subject matter and related tasks of the work.  I’ve seen males take a feminine approach to aspects of the work, and I’ve certainly seen (especially in law practice) females do their best to take on a masculine approach to the work – often thinking that is what they had to do to ‘compete’ in the workplace or the courtroom.

Well, it’s not true.  Either gender can use, hopefully the best of, the feminine or masculine energies in approach to their work.  What’s great about the Inspiring Women Summit is that we’ll get a chance to explore more of the feminine approach - as well as how women can emerge as stronger leaders in the world.  In my view, it’s certainly time in history for a greater emphasis on the feminine, from everyone.  And no, I’m not trying to be emasculating as some in the culture might suggest.  I’ll be the first to take on and use masculine energies when I need to.  It’s just that I know the difference … have a more varied toolbox perhaps than folks who insist on sticking with rigid sex role stereotypes. 

I have my parents to thank for this.  They taught me that I could do whatever I wanted to do based on merit, not on gender.

I wonder how clear these distinctions are for the generation of women who follow mine.  At the baby end of the baby boom and the leading edge of Generation X, I know the struggles of my predecessor women professionals and business owners - the trail blazers – that allowed me to be more of a pioneer with my work, discovering, designing, and building new approaches as opposed to just getting a foothold.  How do the women who come after view their power (‘ability to do’) to take on the important work they have in life and then make amazing contributions they have to make?  And their role – if not trail blazer or pioneer, how do we best characterize what they are up to?

Would love to hear your thoughts on that.  Cheers, Dolly

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching, Enlightened Leadership, Legacy Stories, Life Balance/Harmony Among Life Arenas Tagged With: Baby Boom, Culture, Feminine, Feminine and Masculine Qualities, Generation X, Inspiring Women Summit, Law, Legacy, Medicine, Nursing, Registered Nurse, Sex role stereotypes, Women

A Client Motivated Evolution In My Coaching Work

August 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I had an interesting discussion today with someone about my coaching work.  She was a friend and business owner I know, but we hadn’t talked in year – and caught up through Facebook.  That’s great fun – amid the folks friending me I sometimes can’t fully remember, every now and then you stumble on someone you really DO want to connect with. 

Anyway, prior to our actual chat, after FB and then email exchanges, we had both had the opportunity to visit each others’ websites and catch up on each other’s work.  She started at my old, original site, www.AllThrive.com, which was built to describe the focus of my practice back in the late 1990’s and crossing the ‘threshold into the new millenium’ — remember Y2K?  (I was studying strategic marketing design then with a company that at the time was called Y2Marketing – Y2M, for short – so I remember it vividly because people kept referring to the company as Y2K … they’ve since changed focus and names, but I did get great training from them in how to do direct marketing).

I really do need to get that old site updated, but it gave me the chance to explain a bit more about Creating Legacy – and how developing it has been a journey that my clients started me on. 

Creating Legacy and this blog/network site  were built as a result of so many of my clients saying they wanted to transition out of what they had been doing, to do something that really makes a difference and feels significant to them in terms of making a positive contribution.  Many of them came to me initially to help them build or develop a business.  The evolution came when, business operating smoothly with them at the helm (rather than the business running them …), they discovered they wanted to exit from it and had 20, 30 even 40 more years of life to do something with.

That something might involve different work or starting a new business – but the difference this go around is that they want it to be on their terms, meaningful, fulfilling, fun-even, and have some significance.  If they’re going to work diligently (some even more so than in prior careers) they want it to be good work, even great work – not just hard work.  Yes, productive; yes, profitable – they’d been around the block enough times to know that anything not run in a business-like fashion doesn’t run for too long.  And maybe even pay them a salary if need be – but whether a for profit structure or a nonprofit structure, it needed to be a social enterprise.  Something that made sense and not just money.

Somehow they find even more life energy to bring to the project that way. From a coaching perspective, it always seemed to me that’s how one’s work in the world really should be.  So my clients sort of led me toward the concepts behind Creating Legacy.  In a way, with and because of them I’ve been developing it all from there.  It’s not about what you leave at the end of life, it’s what you consciously build during it …

As I told her, I still do the business development/succession planning/exit planning and career transition work, too – depending on where the person is when they come to me.  But so often that has led into an “and what I really want to do is …” conversation.  That can go in so many different directions about what they decide to do or build next, or they choose to add on to an existing business from a social responsibility perspective, before they step away. 

It’s been really fun and fulfilling work for me, I think that with our generation, there is so much more of that coming.  Not to mention from Gen X and Gen Y – who already have the concepts of working with the world’s ecosystems and making thing sustainable well ingrained in their thinking.

Which is good – the world needs more of it!  And I’m just happy as can be working with people to help them build it.

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching Tagged With: Authenticity, Career Transition, Coaching, Generation X, Generation Y, Significance

Advancing A Legacy of Patient Care and Comfort Through Coaching

August 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Sharon Conley, MD was a practicing medical oncologist at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, FL in need of a change. She had a successful clinical practice that included directing the transplant program in her hospital and conducting clinical research trials. But she was tired, a bit weary of the health care delivery system, and frustrated that she could not do more for the cancer patients she treated.

Dr. Conley envisioned work on a larger scale to comfort and improve the experience of hospitalized patients. Hers had often complained that they could not directly access their prescribed pain medications in enough time to alleviate their often excruciating pain. In her numerous years of medical practice, Dr. Conley developed many ideas of ways to improve the bedside care of hospital patients – to make their experience safer and more satisfying. To address this particular concern, she designed and secured a provisional patent on a device she called the MOD®, short for “Medication on Demand,” to allow hospital patients the ability to self-administer their own pain medications instead of having to call already too-busy nurses to have each dose delivered.

She dreamed of seeing her medical device, the first-ever oral PCA (patient controlled analgesia) device, serving patients in hospitals all over the world.

A physician colleague recommended that Dr. Conley talk to a Professional Coach with whom she herself had been working. So, not sure what would happen, she contacted Dolly Garlo, a former nurse and attorney, now a trained International Coach Federation certified coach, with a business called Thrive!! (www.allthrive.com). Together they began to explore the possibilities of accomplishing the seemingly insurmountable task of bringing the MOD® device to market. “Persistence and consistency, Sharon,” she would hear repeatedly. “Just put one foot in front of the other and let’s see where you go next.”

Since that start, Dr. Conley figured a way, one step at a time, to close her medical practice and leave her physician partnership, while finishing the patent for her device and exploring the world of business – which she discovered happily, was not the mystery she thought it was.

She took business seminars specifically devoted to topics like raising venture capital, working through the maze of medical device manufacturing and mastering applicable government regulations. She created bridges to stay connected to her former medical colleagues, took on clinical research consulting projects to maintain interim financial income while restructuring her finances, and learned to network with anyone having a focus related to the MOD®. She produced a prototype device and was granted a National Institutes of Health grant to pursue a clinical trial of the MOD® at Halifax Medical Center, successfully completed in 2006.

In the clinical trial of Dr. Conley’s MOD® device, 95% of patients reported satisfaction with pain management and ease of use and 84% of nurses reported saving valuable nursing time. Impressive initial results called for a coach-encouraged celebration to maintain momentum with an increasingly busy to-do list. And there have been many such celebrations with each milestone she completed.

Dr. Conley used her great skills at sizing up people and working with multi-disciplinary professionals to assemble a crackerjack business team – a COO with significant business start up experience and a fabulous CFO, not to mention teams of legal, accounting, design and software engineering, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare professionals – always including her trusted coach to help keep her moving forward. As a result, her company, AVANCEN, LLC: Improving Patient Care at the Bedside (www.avancen.com) was born.

And after developing a sound working business plan and raising close to $3 million of private funds the first MOD® devices rolled off the manufacturing line. An ever-evolving business and marketing campaign is being systematically implemented to bring them to hospitals throughout the US, and ultimately the EU, Asia and even Saudi Arabia.  Non-exclusive distribution agreements have been put in place with other vendors who serve the healthcare market from a different perspective.

As she was making this uncharted journey, Dr. Conley was encouraged to stay in touch with the “heart” of her activities — the reasons she was making these big changes. So she went to clown camp to perfect her Dr. FeelGood character – a sort of Groucho Marx in a white lab coat with a magic wand and jelly beans in a jar as feel good pills – her own Patch Adams approach to medical practice. Dr. FeelGood, certainly her alter ego, is one with whom she is encouraged to stay in touch, along with the pursuit of rigorous self-care to maintain the energy for her ambitious projects.

While attending a magic show as chosen way to fulfill that coaching request, Dr. Conley met Gerry, her “Irish Angel,” who has become one of her many mentors. Gerry is also an entrepreneur, with considerable business success and he has introduced her to others in Ireland who may someday play a role in AVANCEN’s mission.  There have been many more  such “chance” meetings of the right people in all areas of her projects, just as she needed them.

Magic indeed. These are but examples of the series of serendipitous events that have occurred since Dr. Conley committed to work with a coach to bring her large dream to life – a dream that will leave an incredible legacy in the medical world.

“One of the wonderful benefits of coaching,” adds Dr. Conley, “is the ability to have somebody to talk to on a regular basis who can help you reflect and discover what your your real talents and passions are all about. Then your coach can help you find the courage and patience within yourself to develop those dreams into reality so you can live life to its fullest.”

Written by: Dolly M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC & Sharon Conley, PhD, MD

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching Tagged With: Career Transition, Coaching, Joy, Leadership, Physician

Best Advice: Get A Coach

July 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Fortune magazine recently interviewed Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and CEO, in a series asking CEO’s to reveal the ”best advice I ever got”.  Mr. Schmidt’s comment?  “Hire a coach.”

At first, he rejected the idea thinking of coaching in a remedial sense – to help correct something that was wrong.  He soon learned, however, that a coach’s role is to help you be better, perform better.

Using a typical sports analogy, more specifically, Mr. Schmidt said this:  “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. In the business context a coach is not a repetitious coach. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in [his] words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”  Here’s what else he had to say:

From my perspective as a trained and certified executive and business development coach, nobody needs a coach, again in the remedial sense, but anyone who is “coachable” can benefit greatly from working with one.

So what does it mean to be coachable?

Someone highly coachable
• can be relied upon to be on time for all calls and appointments
• is willing and able to incorporate the benefits of coaching in their life and business
• is fully willing to do the work and let the coach do the coaching
• will keep their word without struggling or sabotaging
• is willing to “try on” new concepts or different ways of doing things
• speaks straight and tells the whole truth to the coach with both respect and compassion
• can immediately share if they are not getting what they need or expect from the coach, and discuss what they want and need from the relationship
• is willing to stop or change the self-defeating behaviors that limit success (such as blaming, justification, complaining or problem-identification without contribution of possible solutions)
• recognize that coaching is an investment in this coaching program and intend to get as much as possible from the experience
• sees coaching as a worthwhile activity to improve effectiveness in life and business
• can share the credit for success with the coach and others

Choose a qualified coach – one with experience and coach-specific training, and preferably one certified by an independent professional body that requires adherence to a code of professional ethics.  Then, if you have, or are willing to develop these “coachability” traits, get ready to skyrocket your success at whatever you choose to work on with a coach.

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching Tagged With: Career Transition, Coaching, Leadership

Deliberately Seeking Assistance

June 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Asking and actually being able to receive help, and an ability to share credit with the person providing it are three criteria that allow you to maximize power of working with a coach.

“We all need someone who can help us do what we already can.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all in this together.  Working together we can create more through the power of synergy.  A coach holds you accountable so you get more done, but also supports your dreams and your work and helps you expand them.  That way the power of one is multiplied.

None of us are indispensible, which is a relief.  That realization allows us to make mistakes – which are simply learning experiences – and let go of some things altogether.  If you don’t do it, someone else will – if it needs to be done at all.  That’s not to say shirk your responsibilities.  But it’s okay to bow out of commitments you have made in a responsible way, too - and best to do so before you let them overwhelm you.

And not one of us is running the universe, which is a good thing.  The universe will continue to expand infinitely in accordance with the grand plan and design behind it.  You need only go with the flow of it, doing what comes most joyfully to you, seeking to feel better about each step you take as you take it.  That’s where your best efforts and creations come from.  Do you even know what they are?  A coach can help mirror your enthusiasm back to you, and help you recognize it and pursue more of what brings you joy.  The world needs whatever that is, and you definitely don’t need to be slogging through life experiencing anything less.

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching Tagged With: Asking, Coaching, Joy, Synergy

A Mother of Invention Profiled

June 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

When her ideas started bubbling up, and could no longer be contained by indulging in occasional daydreams, Dr. Sharon Conley was an accomplished M.D., specializing in medical oncology – cancer care – with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry.  She headed up the transplant program at her hospital and was active in the day-to-day clinical practice of medicine.  Meaning, she had lots of really sick patients in the hospital to care for, a busy office practice, and a professional partnership to help operate.  She was busy.  And she was restless. And troubled.

She was troubled because her sick patients, who frequently had a lot of pain associated with their conditions, were uncomfortable much of the time they were in the hospital.  And she was restless because she knew there had to be better ways to help them be more comfortable in that setting – when they were there for care intended to make things better.  She was also restless because the ideas she had for how to address that goal, were just that: intangible imaginings.

Eventually this got the better of her and she took action – the first step in the creation process of turning nothing (those ephemeral ideas) into something.  She captured one of her ideas and wrote it down.  That action turned into some drawings, and it all turned into a provisional patent application.  And then a call to my office.

In our initial consultation call, Dr. Conley told me she had a product she wanted to bring to market, and explained that she had a number of ideas for how to make patient care at the bedside a better experience … for the patients.  As a nurse, listening to a doctor talk of something other than diagnosis and treatment – specifically compassionate care – I was intrigued.  She explained about a device she had invented that would allow patients to directly access their physician prescribed pain relieving medicines when they were due on their own, at the bedside, without having to call a nurse and wait for a single dose to be delivered.  She wanted to manufacture it and make it available to as many patients in as many health care settings as possible.  As a professional coach focused on business development and personal fulfillment, I was eager to help her do it.

A great idea and a lofty goal combined to make an incredible legacy story.  Read the rest of it, here.

What has developed from there is a sophisticated business system, utilizing the most applicable legal structures, and incorporating an amazing team of people all inspired to rally around the project.  She didn’t know from the start what she could do, she just believed in the possibilities and was willing to take action – and seek help for doing it.  As a result, Dr. Conley developed into a physician entrepreneur pursuing a socially noble purpose.  See more about her company and its first product, the MOD device, by clicking here: AVANCEN: Improving Patient Care At The Bedside.

Legacy ideas come in all forms and sizes.  Will you be a mother of invention for one of yours?

Filed Under: Blog, Coaching, Legacy Stories Tagged With: Action, Career Transition, Invention, Legacy, Physician