I have a friend who finds himself between jobs. He’s marvelously talented, has a solid track record, and is in the prime of his career.

He also has three months of severance, a couple of young kids who like to eat, and a mortgage.

In my work with senior leaders, I often run into people in this guy’s unfortunate circumstances. Whether caught in corporate re-shuffle or blind-sided by a blind spot, they’re good people who can and will contribute again in significant ways.

After listening to the details of their departure, I usually ask the same question. “How long do you have until you have to have another job?” With executives at this level, the length of severance is not usually the limiting factor. These are people, extraordinary circumstances aside, who have resources beyond a paycheck. Often, they haven’t even thought about the answer to this question.

That’s because they’ve heard the old lettuce analogy: the longer you’re on the shelf (i.e. out of a job), the worse you look. The people who advocate this thinking also advise getting a job as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you might look weak, damaged, and less valuable.

While this thinking has a kind of logic to it, I generally despise it. It feeds desperation in a time when most leaders feel the most vulnerable anyway - after being asked to leave the place where their title, status, and paycheck tells them they’re capable and important. And desperation leads to hasty decisions. All too often, hasty decisions lead us to look back with regret.

How much better to see these interruptions in the career path as gifts where we can re-think what our careers are all about, what talents we have to contribute, and where we can most productively employ those talents? That might take time and reflection that will leave us on “the lettuce shelf” a little longer.

But maybe we’re on the wrong shelf in the first place.

One problem that challenges every coach is the loss of momentum. Whether it’s the summer vacation period, an intense work project that takes you or your colleague out of action for a period of time, or just that occasional and unavoidable scheduling blip, we all face times when the coaching relationship feels stalled, like a sailboat stuck in the middle of the lake on a calm day.

What to do? Start with where you left off. This is when you’ll be thankful that you take notes during meetings with the person you’re coaching. And if you send a little summary note after your sessions, you’ll give another sigh of thanks. At the very least, this gives you a place to start. After catching up on whatever has happened since last talking, you can simply say, “When I look at my notes from our earlier conversations, it looks like we left off by talking about … What’s the update on that issue?”

At this point, you may get a blank stare. Remember, if you feel like the sail is slack, your colleague probably does too. Don’t fear. If that happens, back up a bit further. Review why that issue was important to the person being coached in the first place. Then ask a simple checking question. Something like this might work: “So given all that we just reviewed, how critical is that issue to achieving your goals?”

In the guise of getting started again, you’re doing something very important. You’re bringing the summary of your whole coaching approach right back to the front of mind for you and your colleague, and you’re re-contracting to focus on this issue (or not!).

Whether your colleague jumps back on board that issue or chooses to re-direct your work together, the gentle breeze of momentum should be filling the sails.

What else do you do to re-capture momentum in coaching relationships?

A recent Wall Street Journal article listed financial tips that you shouldn’t take. It got me thinking about all of the trouble we can avoid by just steering clear of conventional wisdom when it’s not so wise after all.

If you spend enough time in the sales function, you’ll hear a lot of advice. It’s often passed on from grizzled veteran to young kid. Much of it is wonderful. Some of it is bunk.

Take article of faith #1: Always be closing. I read about this rule in college when taking a class on persuasion. But after selling for fifteen years and being around more sales functions than I can count in my consulting work, I think it’s misguided. And here’s why: customers (or prospects, as the case may be) expect it! As soon as they realize that your role is to develop busy, they get ready to play familiar roles in an ancient drama: you pursue them desperately and they play hard to get. You try to take them for a ride and they watch their wallets. And so on…

Of course, some business developers act differently, but they are surprisingly rare. And this makes them stand out all the more.

So instead of always closing, always ask yourself, “Can I (or my firm) make a significant contribution to this person/company’s goals? Are they a good fit for us? Will they end up being enthusiastic references for our work - and would we like working for the kinds of people who they send our way?”

This attitude puts you, the “salesperson,” into the role of skeptic instead of forcing the customer to do it. That role reversal, surprising as it is to the customer, often changes the whole dynamic in the relationship. Trust usually rises. And paradoxically, prospects often end up chasing you. (Not always! But more often than you might think.)

What does your own experience tell you? How do you react to salespeople who are always pushing vs. those who offer help, but with an eye on your interests above all?

I just returned from the Breast Cancer Three-Day walk in Chicago. Besides nursing blisters bigger than I had imagined possible, I’m taking away another very important thought from the experience. And that’s the power of gratitude.

Over the course of three days, about 3000 of us walked 60 miles on the blistering streets of Chicago and its suburbs. The walkers were impressive - how many people will voluntarily raise $2000+, pay their own way to the event, and then endure significant discomfort for a cause? One lady even finished the second day of walking in her socks because she couldn’t get her shoes on over her blisters. Personal suffering, loss, and - most importantly - love can motivate us beyond our normal levels.

But even more powerful to me were the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who lined the streets, honked their horns, or volunteered tens of hours to cheer us on. I knew that would happen, but I was particularly surprised by the words most often said to us sweaty, foot-sore walkers.

Thank you.

These thanks were not the automatic, throw-away thanks we so often give and receive in the course of our days. Many people thanked us with tears in their eyes. Others offered us gifts: lollipops, sprays of water, half-melted ice cream sandwiches. The thought counted more than the tokens.

My dad often says, “Gratitude is not a common human fault.” My experience in the world of work bears that out. True, pure gratitude is rare. And it is powerful. It builds relationships, lifts people up, and motivates them to even greater heights.

Who needs your thanks today? It will cost you little and be worth a lot.

A recent lead article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It tells of the conflicting “failure narratives” circulating through the officer corps of the US military about the campaign in Iraq. Different officers from different branches and with different experiences see the situation - and its implications for future strategy - very differently.

No surprise there, and the last thing I’m going to do in this blog is to wade into the debate on why the US military has struggled in Iraq and what to do about it. That’s a different topic and there are more qualified people to speak about it (like the officers referred to in the WSJ article).

What I do find intriguing, though, is the rift reported in the article between senior officers (typically generals) and more junior officers (captains and below). Not surprisingly, they see things differently - based on generation, personal experience, and role in the military. Some generals are defensive. I can’t blame them - I might feel a little defensive when my own junior officers pin the responsibility for failure on my being out of touch.

Buried in the story is a real, tangible problem that does have some relevance to leading talent-intensive organizations. Because above all, the military is a talent-intensive organization - it has an insatiable need to recruit, train, select, and promote people into positions of increasing responsibility. And according to this article, the military has a serious problem. They are having a hard time holding onto a qualified pool of captains from whom to select and promote the senior officers of the future. As one junior officer was quoted,

As long as I don’t get a DUI or fornicate on my boss’s desk, I will be promoted with my peers.

It’s colorful, but it makes a point. This officer saw the discouragement, disillusionment, and resulting departures of his peers as diluting the talent pool. And don’t miss the disappointment in this quote - who wants to be part of a promotion process where you’re not sure the best are sticking around to even compete. It doesn’t bode well for the future health of the military.

This is not unlike the dilemma facing firms in the private sector, especially professional service firms. I consider the promotion pool of a firm’s managers (those a level or two below partner/principal) a bellwether of future firm health. All other things being equal, if a firm is having a hard time holding onto a sufficiently large, qualified, and enthusiastic manager corps, it’s an indicator that something may be amiss.

Sure, partners have more immediate effect on the growth and profitability of the firm, but if managers are getting burned out, flushed out, or simply opting out of the firm, it starts to make me ask questions about the firm’s health. Are managers looking at the partners and wondering whether they want to be part of that cohort? Or are they deciding - all things considered - to pursue their careers elsewhere?

Most of us say we hate politics, especially when we currently have a presidential election cycle that will stretch nearly two years before it comes to its mind-numbing conclusion. How much dark comedy can one nation stand?

But why do we hate politics? After all, politics is just the formal and informal way things get done in any group of people. And like them or loathe them, we ignore them at our peril.

I think we tend to be uncomfortable with politics because they involve relationships with people. Humans can be tricky creatures. And no matter how much we say “it’s not personal” (usually to make ourselves feel better about stepping on someone else), most of us take politics and their implications very personally. After all, my job, my pet project, my budget, my promotion - these all have a very personal possessive pronoun sitting in front of them.

Maybe that’s part of the solution. Maybe we can step back from the project, the budget, even the promotion and say, “OK, it’s not mine. It belongs to all of us and I need to find a way, with these other quirky humans, to come to an agreement about what to do with it.” This takes some even deeper soul work of saying to ourselves, “I’ll be OK even if this doesn’t go my way. My life doesn’t hinge on this decision.”

Not to be Pollyanna here, because when it comes to your job or your compensation, it’s going to feel personal no matter what you tell yourself.

Regardless, as I watch senior leaders grapple with this issue, I almost always see them break through the frustration with politics when they realize that the other(s) involved in the situation have hopes, dreams, and goals - just like themselves - and when they get on with understanding those agendas instead of railing about them. When they look at how they can get the other parties what they want too instead of focusing on themselves, politics goes from an irritant to just what it is - fallible people trying to get stuff done.

What do you do to make politics a positive?

A lead article in today’s Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It tells of the conflicting “failure narratives” circulating through the officer corps of the US military about the campaign in Iraq. Different officers from different branches and with different experiences see the situation - and its implications for future strategy - very differently.

No surprise there, and the last thing I’m going to do in this blog is to wade into the debate on why the US military has struggled in Iraq and what to do about it. That’s a different topic and there are more qualified people to speak about it (like the officers referred to in the WSJ article).

What I do find intriguing, though, is the rift reported in the article between senior officers (typically generals) and more junior officers (captains and below). Not surprisingly, they see things differently - based on generation, personal experience, and role in the military. Some generals are defensive. I can’t blame them - I might feel a little defensive when my own junior officers pin the responsibility for failure on my being out of touch.

Buried in the story is a real, tangible problem that does have some relevance to leading talent-intensive organizations. Because above all, the military is a talent-intensive organization - it has an insatiable need to recruit, train, select, and promote people into positions of increasing responsibility. And according to this article, the military has a serious problem. They are having a hard time holding onto a qualified pool of captains from whom to select and promote the senior officers of the future. As one junior officer was quoted,

As long as I don’t get a DUI or fornicate on my boss’s desk, I will be promoted with my peers.

It’s colorful, but it makes a point. This officer saw the discouragement, disillusionment, and resulting departures of his peers as diluting the talent pool. And don’t miss the disappointment in this quote - who wants to be part of a promotion process where you’re not sure the best are sticking around to even compete. It doesn’t bode well for the future health of the military.

This is not unlike the dilemma facing firms in the private sector, especially professional service firms. I consider the promotion pool of a firm’s managers (those a level or two below partner/principal) a bellwether of future firm health. All other things being equal, if a firm is having a hard time holding onto a sufficiently large, qualified, and enthusiastic manager corps, it’s an indicator that something may be amiss.

Sure, partners have more immediate effect on the growth and profitability of the firm, but if managers are getting burned out, flushed out, or simply opting out of the firm, it starts to make me ask questions about the firm’s health. Are managers looking at the partners and wondering whether they want to be part of that cohort? Or are they deciding - all things considered - to pursue their careers elsewhere?

What do you make of it when you see an anemic manager group in a firm?

I was talking with a client some time ago. She happens to be an in-house lawyer. In the course of conversation, I asked her what her department could be proud of and what they might think about changing.

The “prouds” came easily: the lawyers in her department are technically brilliant. They know their industry and their craft stone cold. Many have worked in the industry (and even in this company) for decades.

She became thoughtful when I asked about what the legal group could change. Eventually, she said, “I think we could stop telling people that they should just trust our judgment because we’re lawyers.”

This client has a great sense of humor. We both laughed at the potentially oxymoronic statement “Trust me, I’m a lawyer” (and the equally funny saying “Trust me, I’m a consultant“). But when we peeled back the attitude behind the “trust me” behavior, it came down to something quite simple: arrogance. It’s the attitude, “I went to school, got a degree, have achieved all of these things, have this position (fill in the blank!) - so you should shut up and listen to me.”

Granted, most people don’t say that out loud, but it comes through in the behavior loud and clear.

Whether or not this approach is morally wrong (and I believe it is), it just doesn’t work when you have to deal with clients and colleagues. They shut down and look for ways to avoid interaction with you. Feeling shown up, they look for ways to repay the favor.

A better - and more challenging - way is to approach others with humility. It could look something like this: “I’m here to bring the absolute best of my experience and training to help you. It’s very possible that those talents could serve you well - but it’s about you and your needs every bit as much as me and my talents.”

Or as a humble friend of mine says routinely, “How can I help?”

I’m curious - what examples of practical humility have you seen in your world?

Think back to your early days in a big new role. How did you feel? What were you thinking as you wandered the halls, trying to find the bathroom?

One of the most precious commodities for any of us - especially when we’re starting up in a new leadership role - is perspective. It’s easy to feel totally lost and to get isolated. That’s why some astute leaders set up a simple group of advisors to act as a sounding board.

Imagine you’re in the middle of a challenging political scenario in your new role. You don’t have years of history in the organization to depend on. You may not have cultivated trusted internal sponsors yet. But you still have to decide how to play the situation. Do you make that high-risk move? Do you play it safe for a while?

It’s right then that you might wish you had a small group of trusted outsiders available to you to test ideas and push your gut feelings. Here’s the good news - you can have one, a Personal Board of Directors.

If you’re like most executives, you’ll immediately begin to think about who would be on your board. But stop. First ask yourself, What do I want this group to do for me? What skills and backgrounds do I really need on my board? Take out a piece of paper and write those things down. You’re going to have to articulate the purpose and skills required anyway when you invite people onto the board. You may as well get them clear beforehand.

I’m curious - what purpose would you want to accomplish with your own board? And what qualities, skills, and background would matter to you?

What makes a good homework assignment? How do you take the real work of the person you’re coaching and turn it into something they might grab onto and make their own?

In past posts, I’ve talked about the principle of homework. I strongly believe that (almost) every coaching session should end with at least one action that both you and your colleague agree will help push practical, on-the-job learning and performance. But choosing the right assignment can be a little tricky.

Let’s start with basics: who chooses the assignment? I’ve argued elsewhere that any coaching homework must ultimately be chosen by the person being coached. This keeps ownership for performance and learning right where it belongs - on the shoulders of the person receiving the coaching.

But as a coach, you can help brainstorm a list of good options. Here’s where it’s important to understand the person you’re working with. One thing I watch for is a client’s learning pace: simply put, is he a sprinter or a marathoner?

Sprinters get all fired up about taking action and ride their inspiration for bursts of learning. They can be impressive with the quantity and quality of work they produce during these periods of energy. But they need short assignments because they also tire quite quickly - or get bored and want to move to something else.

Marathoners are different: they like long-term projects where they can see gradual progress and the fruit of their perseverance. They plug away and eventually reach their destination, knowing that their endurance helped them both get real work done and learn along the way.

Earlier in my coaching work, I looked down on sprinters because they would choose a marathon homework assignment and burn out in the first few miles. I saw it as a character flaw. Now, I just recognize it for what it is - a different approach to work. And I see it as my responsibility to help my client figure out what approach works for them and to choose appropriate assignments.

How about you? How do you help select homework for those you coach?