Talyaa S. Vardar

I have a memory with deep traces coming a long way of my childhood. I was not going to school yet. Along free fields of my hometown in Turkey, which were not invaded by buildings then, we used to play outside a lot. All day we had been playing on the streets of our neighborhood & inventing new games. In April, the fields behind our house were covered with poppy flowers. We could only see red, but nothing else. In one of these days, we were playing in the field. The red was dancing softly with spring breeze… without being aware of time we kept running with the joy of freedom. Loosing ourselves in our innocent enthusiasm amongst red poppy fields, we went far away from home. All of a sudden, rain started to pour. With our tiny steps, it took longer to get back home than usual. I was late. Feeling guilty, I found mom waiting for me in worries at the front door. She looked for me everywhere with despair. With her motherhood worries, she slapped my bum twice with the besom that she was using to wipe the floors. After that worry expression ceremony, she changed my soaking wet clothes, gave me my crayons and art pad, then made sure that I sat by the heating stove. I started to paint with my colorful crayons… I remember the warmth coming from the stove. As I painted, gradually peace filled me inside and outside. As the stove warming my body, art was warming my heart. As I continued to paint, I forgot about the slaps on my bum…I forgot about mom’s worries…
Art healed my anxiety and transformed the feeling of guilt into calmness.

Years have passed over those childhood days… I stepped into adulthood and gave a long break to arts. But my return was one of extraordinary. Now I am playing with my daughter and together we involve ourselves in all kinds of arts. Watching my 5-year-old daughter playing, singing and dancing so easily, I understand that she doesn’t have to make any effort to be playful. She does not have any performance worries. She does not have stereotypes about aesthetic perfection. She only plays from within… she plays the moment!

Somehow when we grow up, things change. We learn to forget to attend the moment. We make giant sandwiches from ourselves between over processing of past and future, then feeling of stuckness becomes a habit, a way of life. Somehow we forget our most important childhood lesson that we can release our problems by activating our own creative potential.

A Way To Know

After I met art therapy and have changed the direction of my life towards transformational studies, I re-acquired a habit to paint, dance and write prior to important decisions. Such an inquiry helps me to find creative answers. To distance myself from my problems through art, surely crystallizes my thoughts and releases the pressure…my perspective shifts and my problem gains an enriched vision. If I am about to give an important decision, creative act encourages me and allows me breathe the space. Ever since the first one, I have received similar feedback from the participants of my Creative Workshops. My purpose in these workshops is to motivate exploration of our embedded creative potential and deepest desires. During and after these workshops, participants express their relaxation, release of stress, body connection and sensitivity with feeling of self-fulfillment. Whatever comes out during creative process, it helps us to externalize the inside and start a “dialogue” with what becomes visible and tangible now. Art bridges with what surrounds us inside and outside.

Positive Results

In modern era, arts and creativity have been moved away from daily lives. If ever art goes beyond being a myth that only belongs to museums, galleries and stages and embed into life more, then we might process own creative potential. Unlike the ancient times, today we live in an age in which art has been materialized. But indeed, imagination, dreams and creative expression is existential to human evolution. In order to sustain authentic growth, we should encourage this existential capacity. Creative process has a catalyzing effect on stress and negative emotions. When individuals can express themselves from within, not only this will result in high awareness of authentic confidence versus fear, but also it will lead to cohesion born from deeper knowing and empathy amongst the society.

“Milton Erickson Principles and Leadership Success”

by Talyaa S. Vardar

Studies have shown that coaching in the workplace is an effective strategy for enhancing productivity, job fulfillment, motivation, culture, and ROI. Coaching in organizations is no longer just the role of human resource professionals, organizational development experts, internal/external coaches or trainers, but it is a fresh perspective and approach to leadership success. Increasingly, executives and managers in multiple corporations of many kinds have been engaging with employees and colleagues through coaching competencies. Our expectation is that this is likely to continue to grow in years ahead.

In their book, The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (HBS Press, 2002), management experts Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux explain a special case of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the Pygmalion effect suggests that the expectations of a powerful “other” (boss, parent or teacher), even if they are inaccurate, can influence the behavior of the weaker individual (subordinate, child or student). The process starts with the development of expectations about a target person. These expectations are communicated, more or less consciously, to the target person. The target person notices and internalizes these expectations and starts to behave as expected. They explain how the blame culture can sink an employee’s performance.

This book describes how, as corporate managers and executives, we all know that we have direct impact on employee motivation, eagerness to contribute, workplace engagement, thus total success and fulfillment level.

Where does coaching stand in this process?

How can Ericksonian coaching specifically contribute to the success of today’s organizational leaders?

Originated from Milton Erickson approach, top Erickson coaching principles include “people are okay” and “people have the best resources available to themselves.” When a leader starts to see his/her employee as okay and resourceful rather than as a low achiever or someone who needs to be fixed, then they start cultivating a “learning culture” versus a “judging culture” within their organization. A learning culture is driven by creativity, well-considered strategies, future solutions and betterment of an existing situation whereas a judging culture is fed by blame, guilt, fear based status-quo and past as evidence of keeping the mediocre. We call this a “social context” within an organization which helps us understand the soft factors behind organizational productivity.

Which culture do you think has higher chances of success and fulfillment? A learning culture promotes inquiry approach through powerful questions. Instead of making judgments, learners get curious about deeper reasons of others’ behaviors and actions. Curiosity and desire for learning at a deeper level ignites authentic communication between people, openness and constant development. Thus coaching becomes a strong skill for driving toward becoming a learning organization (the term was suggested by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Element). Peter Senge describes how learning organizations can become a sustainable source of learning, growing, cultivating and innovating. A learning organization is always a step ahead of the competition. Employees find meaning in their work that results in motivation from within.

When organizations adopt these principles, leaders become natural motivators for their employees. Through inviting powerful inquiry into the workplace they naturally tap into employees’ true potential and creativity. As explained by the Gallup Study more than a decade ago with more than 1 million employee and manager interviews to identify the most important elements in sustaining workplace excellence, now we all know that such engagement has direct impact on creating strong workforce and success culture.

A leader as Ericksonian coach does not have to act like a professional coach. Rather the leader as coach acts as a catalyst for creating and maintaining a learning organization culture-an organic organizational approach for talent management and leadership development.

Finding flow

Reviews the book ‘Finding Flow,’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published on July 01, 1997

Although adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal, ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or through an evaluation by one’s supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker’s skills.

Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work, which each of us learn as we grow up.

Yet we can’t blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one’s life, it is always better to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.

Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one’s job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working–more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.

The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in what order. The next step is to match one’s skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed, or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.

FLOW AT PLAY

In comparison to work, people often lack a clear purpose when spending time at home with the family or alone. The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: Free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Apparently, our nervous system has evolved to attend to external signals, but has not had time to adapt to long periods without obstacles and dangers. Unless one learns how to use this time effectively, having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life.

Leisure time in our society is occupied by three major sorts of activities: media consumption, conversation, and active leisure–such as hobbies, making music, going to restaurants and movies, sports, and exercise. Not all of these free-time activities are the same in their potential for flow. For example, U.S. teenagers experience flow about 13 percent of the time that they spend watching television, 34 percent of the time they do hobbies, and 44 percent of the time they are involved in sports and games. Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV than doing hobbies or sports. Similar ratios are true for adults.

Why would we spend four times more of our free time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good? Each of the flow-producing activities requires an initial investment of attention before it begins to be enjoyable. If a person is too tired, anxious, or lacks the discipline to overcome that initial obstacle, he or she will have to settle for something that, although less enjoyable, is more accessible.

It is not that relaxing is had. Everyone needs time to unwind, to read trashy novels, to sit on the couch staring into space or watching TV What matters is the dosage. In a large-scale study in Germany, it was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television.

Source:Psychology Today