“The Flip” is a shift in perception and experience that leads from trapped and limited possibility where you are at the mercy of your circumstances, to experiences of liberation and infinite possibility where you are the creator of your reality.

Here’s how “The Flip” happened with one of my clients.

The Story of Sandra

I started working with “Sandra,” the director of her department, when her manager became frustrated with Sandra’s inability to be strategic and passionate about her work. Sandra was also aggravated by the craziness of her organization. Both Sandra and her manager agreed that career/leadership coaching would help.

Frustration was warranted on both sides:  Sandra was getting mixed messages about her performance from her manager and was working with a leadership team that demonstrated very little strategic ability themselves. She had become timid because of these mixed messages she experienced –  her hesitation reinforced her manager’s perception of a problem.

Sandra was allowing herself to be limited by a difficult situation. She felt trapped with no options and saw no clear action that would resolve the situation. As our coaching progressed even I was concerned that Sandra wouldn’t break out of her difficulties.

It was Sandra’s decision to quit her job that finally allowed her to become empowered and see more possibilities, both inside and outside of her organization. She decided that she had had enough of “the crazies”; she could and would try something different.

Ironically, once Sandra decided to quit her job, she became both more strategic and passionate about her work. Where before she had been afraid to take risks and “rock the boat,” she now felt she had nothing to lose and she became more assertive. She took the lead in conversations and projects that she cared about, and persisted in presenting her solutions.

As a result, Sandra’s manager began to see her as more strategic and passionate, exactly the goals of our coaching. Sandra had made “The Flip”.

Plato’s Cave

“The Flip” is not something that you can just read about and understand – it must be experienced. As a coach I have learned to be very patient with the process of flipping.

At the same time, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of “The Flip”. The sooner you flip, the sooner you start moving out of difficult situations.

The fictional story of Plato’s Cave from Plato’s work, The Republic, illustrates the power of “The Flip”…

A group of people is chained and held immobile since childhood in a deep, dark cave, their heads held in place in such a way that they can only see a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a huge fire. Between the fire and the people is a pathway, where people walk with objects that create shadows on the wall the people can see.

The people live their lives seeing the shadows cast by others, believing that reality is comprised only of the images on the wall.

The story continues with one of the prisoners being freed. This person sees the things that create the shadows: the people, the objects, and the fire. After a lifetime of solely seeing shadows, these things are confusing and not recognizable. The fire is too bright and overwhelming and the person is compelled to look back at the familiar shadows for orientation.

It takes time for this person to realize that the shadows are just a partial component of reality.

The story continues with the prisoner being brought out of the cave into the world of the sun, with day and night, seasons, and plants: an expanded reality. Eventually the person acclimates and comes to enjoy this new reality.

But the freed prisoner remembers the people in the cave. How might they understand how shadows are created as projections from what Plato called “The Forms” or “thoughts”.  How might they understand the expanded possibilities of reality outside the cave?

“The Flip” is a process of answering these questions and understanding that the reality you know as true is a result of your perceptions and experiences, as in the story of Plato’s Cave. The IAM Essence Map is the tool we use in the IAM Way to make this flip.

The IAM Essence Map

When I started working with Sandra, her main focus was on her manager’s mixed messages and the reactive behavior (not strategic) of the leadership team: all true perceptions.

Sandra’s focus was on what we call Drama – the difficult details of her situation – the shadows dancing on the walls of her perception.

Once Sandra decided to quit, she broke the chains that keep her focused on Drama. She experimented with what we call her Essential Best – the ideas and behaviors that come from her Essence – the light that is the source of her soul or true self.

Sandra made “The Flip” only after she saw for herself the response of her manager and the leadership team to her new behaviors. She created different experiences and an expanded reality that included possibilities that were not available before she flipped. This includes her being much happier in exactly the same situation she was in when we started coaching.

Some examples of what people see from a Drama perception include:

• Focus on people, situations and circumstances outside of yourself as the source of your problems
• Feel resigned about ‘what is’ with little or no belief that your career or life could be any different
• See other people as fragile or not capable of handling the feedback and challenge you can provide

Some examples of what people see from an Essential Best perception include:

• Focus on your beliefs and patterns of behavior as the source of your experience
• Find opportunity within difficulty to clarify what you want and then have that happen
• See other people as healthy, whole and resourceful

The IAM Essence Map can be used as a diagnostic tool for yourself and others to check where your perception is coming from.

A Continuum of Flipping

Once Sandra saw how people responded to her when she made some changes, we could discuss additional flips and possibilities.

Sandra and I now talk about her first major flip as we discuss the challenges she is facing as a leader. I occasionally remind her of what she was like before she flipped and challenge her to coach people in their own process of flipping.

“The Flip” is not actually one flip but a series of many shifts as we explore what it means to be powerful creators of our experience, more and more every day, leading others to be empowered.

The story of “Plato’s Cave” shows that it’s a process that takes time to journey out of a “dark cave” of sight and perception, into the world of possibility above “the cave”:

“The prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.   ~~ Plato, The Republic, Book VII

Remember that “The Flip” requires challenging yourself and others to reconsider what is “real” on an ongoing basis. The IAM Essence Map is a simple and practical tool that you can repeatedly use to guide people out of “dark cave realities” that are created when they focus on Drama, and flip to a focus through the perspective of their Essential Best.

Your IAM Coaches are here to remind you of the possibilities that are available to you in the world outside of “dark caves”, the kinds of experiences that are possible when you flip to a perception of the world that is available from the perspective of your Essential Best – especially in a holistic way that honors your head, heart and spirit!

So let us know the story your flip! Or your hopes for a flip … It’s all good  you know.

Have You Made The Flip? is a post from: IAM Learning Community

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Learning to lead and manage upward is critical to delivering winning results for your career and for your organization – double win.

This is a follow-on article to “The Myth of Hierarchical Leadership“, which I published in the IAM blog on December 22nd.  In that article we discussed how leadership in organizations does not just flow from the top. In fact, the majority of day-to-day leadership decisions and actions can and should emanate from all over the organization, particularly from the front lines of action.

In the healthiest organizations, front-line people are enabled, empowered and trusted to make autonomous decisions in real-time that benefit the health and goals of the organization. This kind of autonomy also enables higher job satisfaction and fulfillment in our personal careers. This is a key bridge between what IAM refers to as “Career Alignment” and “Workplace Alignment”.

From where does that trusted enablement and empowerment emanate? Is this yet another type of blessing that people must wait for from “top management”?  No … and that is the point!

The very words “enablement” and “empowerment” have become soured over time largely because many people see them as something they need to wait for someone else to bestow on them.  If so, the people and the organization as a whole choose to remain entrapped and limited within the Myth of Hierarchical Leadership.

It Begins with You

For decisions and actions that relate to your area of responsibility and your career, the path to trusted enablement and empowerment must begin with you. That begins by first realizing that most organizations have their management hierarchies turned upside-down. Healthy organizations flip the model of who leads and who serves.

One of the most important roles of senior management in any organization is to serve the needs of the groups and individual contributors within the organization, not the other way around. The best senior management leaders know that they serve their organizations and their people best when they operate continuously in service and support roles rather than in modes of artificial command-and-control.  If yours don’t, it is critical to your job and your career to help retrain yourself and them.

The best way for people in senior positions to know what service the organization needs from them is for you to tell and show them … you “Leading and Managing Upward”. Unless the people who have authority over budgets, people and resources know what you need to accomplish your goals, they are left in a position of guessing and you are left in a position of waiting. This simply perpetuates the Myth and a continuous cycle of us-versus-them … “We can’t get anything done because we are always waiting for them” … “They don’t accomplish things fast enough because they are always waiting for us”.

Key Factors of Managing Upward

The most effective way that you can serve your organization, your own career and your personal job satisfaction is to realize your role as a leader in your organization and Manage Upward. That means being very clear in your communications about exactly what you need to accomplish your role in the organization and exactly how you need senior management to serve you in that role.

To be most effective, your communications about your wants and needs should have at least five important characteristics:

Context:  Understand the other goals and priorities of the organization and do your best to present your request within the context of those other priorities. You do not work in isolation. Often decision-makers must weigh your requests and recommendations in the context of other, perhaps competing, priorities. Help them with that.

Fact-Based: Do your homework, understand the details as best you can and present the facts. Stay away from speculation, estimations and personal assumptions. The time to use your gut-feel and intuitive judgment is AFTER you have the resources you need, not when you are trying to get them.

Results-Oriented: Frame your requests and recommendations within the context of how they will benefit the organization. These benefits should be as tangible, realistic to achieve and measureable as possible.

Concise Clarity of Need:  Be as specific as possible about what you need from the person you are asking, as well as from the other resources within his or her range of responsibility.

Timing:   Timing is very important. Being specific about urgency and when you need the resources will help ensure you get what you need when you need it.

Fruits of Empowerment

The fruits of a workplace of enabled and empowered people are literally limitless.

When individuals and teams operate in an environment of autonomous freedom, the agility of thinking, nimbleness of response and latitude in the ability to be creative and innovative takes on dimensions that cannot be achieved by environments constrained by structures of top-down management.

When you realize that empowerment is yours to create, your career and your workplace will be transformed in ways beyond your imagination.

Managing Upward Requires Re-Training

Creating an environment of empowered autonomy for yourself and your organization will probably require some retraining for you and for the people who have ascended to senior management positions. The Myth is strong, self-perpetuating and requires work to dismantle its fallacies of command-and-control.  The best way for you to help dismantle it is through your communications and actions. Letting people in senior management positions know exactly what you need and why you need them will not only build their confidence in you, it will give them guidance in what the organization needs from them.

Your enablement and empowerment begins with enabling and empowering yourself. If you choose to remain trapped within the Myth of Hierarchical Leadership, including the crippling effects it has on your organization and on your personal career, look nowhere else to blame but in your own mirror.

Leading and Managing Upward is a post from: IAM Learning Community

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Welcome to our archives of past SYC calls!

Our Monthly Staying Your Course teleconferences are focused on topics that Premium Members want to discuss.

In general, the intention for SYC is to support you in staying focused on your essential best, learning from drama, banishing stress, and shifting beliefs that keep you from creating what you REALLY want with your work and life.

Let us know what topics are of interest to you and we’ll be sure to include these on a SYC call! (Add your topics, questions, comments below …)

Calls are scheduled on the 2nd Thursday of each month at 1pm ET. Don’t worry about missing a call as they are all recorded and archived here. These recordings are for Premium Members only…

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Staying Your Course: 2012 Past Call Recordings is a post from: IAM Learning Community

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Welcome to our archives of past SYC calls!

Our Monthly Staying Your Course teleconferences are focused on topics that Premium Members want to discuss.

In general, the intention for SYC is to support you in staying focused on your essential best, learning from drama, banishing stress, and shifting beliefs that keep you from creating what you REALLY want with your work and life.

Let us know what topics are of interest to you and we’ll be sure to include these on a SYC call! (Add your topics, questions, comments below …)

Calls are scheduled on the 2nd Thursday of each month at 1pm ET. Don’t worry about missing a call as they are all recorded and archived here. These recordings are for Premium Members only…

Sorry, this content is for members only. Click here to get access.   Already a member? Login below… Email Password   Remember me (for 2 weeks) Forgot Password

Staying Your Course: 2012 Past Call Recordings is a post from: IAM Learning Community

Related posts:

1. Protected: PLF MM Call – 7.15.11 There is no excerpt because this is a protected post....

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