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.

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