Category Archives: Customer Engagement

October 9, 2012 · 9:17 pm

Listen to Terry Murray and Ravi Rao, M.D., Ph.D. Discuss the Importance of Emotions in the Workplace on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show

I had the privilege of appearing on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show last Friday afternoon where we were joined by Dr. Ravi Rao, author of “Emotional Business – Inspiring Human Connectedness to Grow Earnings and the Economy”.  Dr. Rao is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and received his neurosurgery training at Harvard Medical School, brought his brilliant perspective to the conversation.

You’re welcome to listen to the podcast below!

© 2012, Terry Murray.

© 2012, Patricia Raskin.

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July 23, 2012 · 1:39 pm

Cultivating and Sustaining a Creative, Organizational Culture, Part III

Key Concept ~ Here’s part three in a series of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, that explore the nuanced challenge of cultivating a vibrant, inclusive organizational culture in today’s volatile world.

~ Empathy

The authentic expression of empathy contributes to our presence and is capable of re-engaging disaffected associates.  Most of us, at one time or another, have worked for companies and bosses that used us for their own personal gain.  I have.  Not a lot of fun.  The conditioned behavior of caution, of keeping our heads down and not fully and openly offering all of our gifts and talents to the endeavor is a natural result of these past experiences in the workplace.  Words alone cannot heal these wounds.  After all, language only represents approximately ten percent of how we communicate with other beings.  Empathy comes directly from the heart and radiates an unspoken energy that is felt by those we encounter, whether they are immediately conscious of it or not.  In a way, it’s the energetic acknowledgement that we’re all connected and share in a common human experience.  By being sensitive to the emotions of others, empathy communicates authentic concern for another person’s well being.

I discovered a powerful metaphor for authentic presence while working with Linda Kohanov and the Epona herd of horses at her ranch in Arizona.  One of the early phases of the Epona Approach™ involves an exercise called the reflective round pen.  As prey animals, horses are natural empaths; they acutely feel the emotions and intention of those around them.  They sense emotion as information, information they receive from the intelligence centers in their enormous hearts and guts.  This is an evolutionary survival mechanism in prey animals.  They don’t stop to mentally analyze or judge these messages.  To pause and think about what they’re feeling may lead to their becoming a predator’s next meal.

Horses trust these messages and act without hesitation.  The empathic powers of horses are so finely tuned that when they encounter a human that is incongruent (displaying behavior that doesn’t match their intention) the horse will quietly walk away.  They feel beyond the masks we humans so often wear with each other.  Conversely, if the horse feels a person is congruent with their emotions, good, bad, or, indifferent, they will join up with them.  People are very similar.    Leaders that are capable of maintaining presence and radiate congruency of intention and emotion will see their constituents wanting to join up with them as well.

Linda prepares the person for the reflective round pen exercise with a horse by having the person conduct a body scan; a self-reflective process aimed at reconnecting the person with the intelligence centers that exist in their body as well as their head.  It is an exercise in presence that enables the participant to focus on what they are feeling within their entire being, reconnecting with the messages our body is continuously attempting to send us.  By connecting with our whole body intelligence we can begin to get out of our head and into our heart, recognizing what we are feeling and allowing the messages these emotions are attempting to convey to us.  It really is the first step in developing self mastery, being completely present within one’s self.  Self-awareness opens the mind to see through eyes of others.

My first experience with the reflective round pen offered several powerful revelations.  First, when I conducted my body scan (I actually envision a conscious form of an MRI scanning down my body) I noticed tension in my shoulders.

Linda instructed me to acknowledge and expand this feeling and to “breathe into that sensation, sending it oxygen and awareness.  Ask it what information it’s holding for you and be open to how your body may speak to you.”

Being a novice with horses I was a bit tense as I prepared to enter a sixty foot round pen with a 2,200 pound black Percheron named Kairos.  As I followed Linda’s instructions I sensed the tension in my shoulders inform me to just relax…just be.  The moment I acknowledge this message and spoke it out loud the tension dissipated instantly.  (This is a consistent occurrence using this practice.  My firm, Performance Transformation, employs this experiential learning approach in our various leadership, sales, and team building workshops.  We witness this release in more than 90% of our participants.)

I entered the round pen embodying this message, to relax and simply be present.  As I did, Kairos approached me, his giant hoofs gently puffing up dust as the physical and energetic space between us narrowed.  Before I knew it, his soft nose was touching my forehead, his deep, solemn breath washing over my face; in fact washing over my entire being.  We began to move together around the pen in delicate synchronization.  Neither he nor I was leading.  Neither he nor I was following.  Somehow we were perfectly connected in co-creative relationship, entirely in the moment.  Our movements anticipated one another’s as we stepped around the pen, side by side, without judgment or mental noise, profoundly connected in a place of peacefulness and trust.

What I had discovered was that by connecting with my embodied intelligence I had truly aligned with my self.  A moment of authentic presence emerged and my ability to empathically connect with another sentient being flowed effortlessly.  It seemed that Kairos and I felt each other’s presence so clearly we were able to connect on a majestically beautiful and inspirational level.  Neither of us attempted to dominate the other, we could simply move in the moment with grace and dignity.

The analogy of what I had experienced in leading the European business team those many years ago was not lost upon me.  I had entered into the leadership relationship with an open mind and, perhaps more importantly, an open heart.  I did not judge their ways of doing business as worse or better than corporate’s perspective.  It was simply their way of doing things that suited their markets and environment.  I genuinely cared about their success and empowered them to co-create the relationship resulting in a level of acceptance and respect that still resonates with me today.

Some of us are natural empaths; capable of feeling the emotional energy of those we encounter.  This can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing.  Humans that are highly sensitive to these emissions can actually be overwhelmed by the emotions of those they encounter.  We’ve all experienced this on some level.  Think back to a moment when you may have encountered someone experiencing significant inner conflict; you most likely recoiled from that person without even being conscious as to why you reacted this way.  You simply knew you wanted to put space between you and that person.

While it can be challenging, natural empaths are well served by learning to discern the emotional energy of others from their own.  Conversely, those of us that are less aware of the emotional energy surrounding us are capable of learning how to calibrate our sensitivity to others.

I learned this while working on the empathy education company project I mentioned earlier in this book.  The company used scenario-based learning for clinical health care professionals to elevate their ability to express empathy towards people and family members experiencing a health crisis.

There is a significant difference between simply being present, expressing authentic empathy, and trying to fix the person or situation.  As we learned during this project, this is an exceptionally difficult delineation for health care providers and people drawn to serve others.  They are attracted to their profession by their desire to heal people, to ease their suffering by fixing their ailment.  It is difficult for them to accept there are certain situations they cannot fix, and attempting to do so beyond a certain point communicates a paternalistic, almost patronizing message to people in deep emotional pain.

What we discovered was the clinicians needed to learn to let go of this attitude and accept, what in their conditioned, well trained terms is considered defeat.  In other words, accept things exactly as they are.  The kindest and most conscientious expression they can offer at that point is empathy.  In certain situations they can no longer heal the body yet they can still help heal the spirit.

The lesson here is that empathy does not require action, only presence, authentic listening, and the allowance of space for emotional processing.  Simply being sensitive to the situations of those around us and quietly acknowledging what they may be experiencing is an expression of empathy.  We all experience ups and downs in our personal lives.  If leadership wants associates to be truly engaged, they must recognize these trials and tribulations will inevitably follow people into the workplace.  Authenticity recognizes emotions, both highs and lows, as part of being whole and present.

© 2011 – 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.  All Rights Reserved.

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July 12, 2012 · 12:06 pm

Cultivating and Sustaining a Creative, Organizational Culture, Part II

Key Concept ~ Here’s part two of a series of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur”, exploring a mindful approach to cultivating the right organizational culture for today’s Idea Economy.

~ Reaping What Has Been Sown

Businesses have a difficult time addressing things they cannot measure, yet there are real costs associated with these veiled issues.  The greatest hidden cost that erodes organizational performance is employee disengagement.  Gallup®, Inc. has been measuring employee engagement levels since the beginning of the decade and reports on these surveys in the Gallup Management Journal.  The study indicates 29% of employees in America are engaged (meaning they work with passion, energy, and are emotionally connected to their organization), 56% of employees are not engaged (meaning they are physically present but do not work with passion or energy), and 15% are actively disengaged (meaning they actually are working at cross purpose with their fellow associates).  The study estimates the annual, aggregate cost of employee disengagement is anywhere between $237 and $270 billion in lost productivity.

  A recent study published in the Harvard Business Review® indicates that during what is now termed The Great Recession the percentage of actively disengaged employees has skyrocketed to 21%!

If we extrapolate these findings into a small business environment (even using the conservative numbers from Gallop), say one with twenty employees and payroll of $1 million, the impact of employee engagement becomes strikingly tangible.

In this scenario we can anticipate six employees are activity engaged, eleven are sleepwalking through their day, and three are actively working to undermine the company’s mission.  If we give the sleepwalkers the benefit of the doubt, that they’re perhaps contributing at 50% of their capabilities, we can assume that at a minimum, $425,000 of our million dollar payroll is providing no return on investment whatsoever.  This doesn’t take into account the value the actively disengaged employees are actually destroying through their efforts beyond the lost wages we are paying them.  Conversely, we are only enjoying a full return on investment on thirty percent of our annual payroll through our associates that are actively and passionately engaged with the mission!

Thankfully, the intentions and congruent actions of authentic leadership can re-engage many of the sleepwalkers by cultivating an atmosphere of trust and inclusion.

The fifteen  to twenty-one percent that are working to undermine their fellow associates simply need to go.  Their participation in the enterprise frustrates passionate associates and serves to foment further disengagement with the sleepwalkers. This is a great example of addition through subtraction.

Creating a shift in culture to one of trust and engagement begins with authenticity; the suspension of managerial ego in the daily interaction of the business.  Altruistic intentions combined with congruent actions resonates positive energy and engages associates to be fully present and contributory.  A genuine concern for the well being of associates that is consistently expressed will ignite the collective consciousness of a fully present team.

You’d be surprised how quickly leadership can turn around associate disengagement.  In the 1990’s I was working as the Vice President of International Marketing for a major medical device company.  My responsibilities brought me into close and frequent contact with the European managing directors for each country we operated in throughout the continent.  Moral was very low as the corporation historically had operated as a classic U.S. exporter into the region.  Products, services, pricing, and business methods were not tailored for the individual cultures and markets.  Everything was developed and dictated from the U.S. corporate office.  This situation was exacerbated by a veritable turnstile of senior management being assigned from the states that was not sensitive to the various cultural and operational nuances that existed country to country and quite often within the nation states themselves.

The first thing I did as the new Vice President was to begin listening to the concerns of the managing directors and repositioning our portfolio to more closely align with their particular business needs.  This quickly escalated into my advocating with corporate the need to begin manufacturing products in Europe for Europeans and to expand our services within each market.  The European associates began to witness my actions matching my words and a new found faith in the future of the organization began to emerge.  For the first time in years the European associates began to feel the company aligning with their interests, markets, and corresponding opportunities for career success.

Within a few short months I found myself promoted to Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  Not only was I faced with the challenge of relating to a wide spectrum of cultural perspectives but I was also twenty years younger than all of my direct reports (European hierarchies tend to move much slower than U.S. companies when it comes to promotions).  With my new level of authority I began empowering the managing directors to conduct business in the manner that best suited their opportunities and constraints.  I knew I had secured their trust when my managing director for Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Thanassis Bouzabardis, spoke up during a business dinner in Madrid with all of the managing directors, “Terry, I think I can speak for all of the directors when I tell you we don’t view you as another American coming here to manage our business…we view you as a fellow European.”

To this day I feel that was one of the greatest complements I’ve ever received regarding my leadership style and abilities.  By listening, expressing authentic empathy for their environments, and acting congruently I began shifting the culture of the business from a place of poor morale to re-engaging the European associates.  All of this took place within six short months.  The European team also increased sales by more than $16 million in that same timeframe!

Early stage companies have the advantage of starting with a relatively blank slate.  Enlightened hiring practices will attract enlightened talent.  Authentic leadership will attract authenticity.  Sharing the Vision during the hiring process will help in this regard as will following one’s intuition.

The compensation plan offered to new hires can also weed out people simply looking for immediate gratification versus people in search of being a part of something more meaningful and of greater significance in their lives.  The compensation package can reveal if a person is looking for remuneration based solely on their perceived individual value or if they are willing to work for a reasonable, competitive wage buoyed by incentives derived through team value creation and the tangible contribution of achieving shared goals.

The courage of visionary conviction will not miss out on what may appear to be the minimum talent threshold necessary for performance.  It will, in fact, reveal human beings capable of continuous growth and cooperation.  Fully engaged, eclectically talented associates,  build the creative bandwidth necessary for adaptive problem solving along the way.

Existing organizations are faced with a more challenging task in the cultivation of positive, collective consciousness.  It cannot be achieved overnight, but through the application of authenticity and consistent, conscious leadership it can happen in a surprisingly short period of time as my experience in Europe proved.  The expression of empathy combined with the vibrant cultivation of trust can rehabilitate the most disengaged workforce in a few short months.

Supported by honest accountability, starting with self-accountability, a conscious leader will begin to engage associates that have developed conditioned behaviors of self-preservation that dilute creative contribution.  The onus is on the leader to reach out and begin to display and communicate their dedication to the well being of each individual on the team.  Leadership that chooses to serve the team as a primary approach towards serving the business.

to be continued…

© 2011-2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.

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April 29, 2012 · 8:39 am

The Strategic Imperative of Inclusive, Creative Organizational Culture

Key Concept ~ In our series on the three key elements for accelerating successful startups, here’s the third in a series of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”.  (Note:  A special thanks to my readers for your patience in the the updates on this blog site.  The team’s been in Missouri for the past ten days conducting a series of training exercises with psychologists from the VA and with local veterans to launch Warriors in Transition in the Southeast Missouri community).

~ Creative Culture

While leadership is paramount in orchestrating the creative visualization of an enlightened strategic planning process, it is the propagation of culture that will carry an organization forward to scalable heights (or lows; it cuts both ways) that resonate far beyond a single personality.  It is much like the relationship between a gardener and their garden.  The gardener may be capable of inspirational work, but it is the garden that inspires.

The traditional definition of organizational culture is the shared values, norms, artifacts, and embraced behaviors of an enterprise.  This is a somewhat superficial definition that historically has proven to poorly serve leaders attempting to drive performance or organizational change.  At best, it places culture at the periphery of the company, as if it is a side effect of the mission.  At worst, by referring to culture as an artifact, it infers that the culture is a coincidental by-product or relic of the organization.

In reality, culture is the vibrational resonance of the collective consciousness of the organization.  This immediately changes the way we think about culture.  It is no longer a by-product of what a company does but a powerful force that affects everything and everybody involved in the business.  The frequency of cultural energy is self-generating and perpetually regenerating.  When we drop a pebble into a pool we cannot alter the ripples that move continuously outward without disrupting the entire pool.  It is leadership’s role to drop the appropriate pebbles, at the appropriate time, knowing the resonance will expand beyond their immediate control.

For nearly a decade working as a strategic consultant with life science and medical device start-up enterprises I began to notice a common challenge shared by these companies.  The vast majority of these companies emerge from intellectual property cultivated in academic settings.  As these companies are formed they bring along members of the research staff and are often lead by a scientist, physician, or engineer that first developed the technology in their laboratory.  It is an exciting time reflecting the natural progression of organizational evolution, but this progression requires substantive, adaptive change at the very heart of the enterprise.

Unwittingly, these entrepreneurs bring along the academic culture from whence they came.  The culture that was ideal for the nurturing and early cultivation of their intellectual property is ironically very poorly suited for the business environment they are attempting to enter.  This is exacerbated by the nature of their technology and the critical demands of customers, regulators, and investors in the health care and pharmaceutical research markets.  The mission has changed (moving from creating technology to commercializing technology) yet the emerging organization clings to their historical culture, usually quite unaware of the risk this is about to introduce to the nascent company.

I’ve observed that these start-up companies are often unaware of the imperative need to quickly migrate from an academic culture to that of a business oriented culture.  This naiveté is a leading contributor of failure in early stage companies.  It is not the technology that fails; it is leadership’s inability to recognize the significance of culture and the fundamental importance of creating and cultivating the culture necessary to meet the high expectations of their target marketplace.

But why is this?  These are quite often remarkably gifted intellectuals capable of remarkable discoveries, insights, and performance.  It is a facet of business dogma that culture is a by-product of artifacts, shared values, and attitudes rather than the actual energy of the collective consciousness of the organization.  It is not peripheral; it is concentric to the very essence of the organization.

The academic culture to which they cling isn’t bad; it is just as it should be in the early, creative stages of intellectual property.  It simply no longer resonates with the frequency the evolving organization needs to successfully connect with customers in a commercial environment.  The very nature of the enterprise has evolved and it is leadership’s responsibility to anticipate and ignite the new energy and intention necessary to fulfill this new mission.

One of the reasons culture may be perceived as an allusive, almost amorphous issue may be due to the fact that it is rarely discussed during the early stages of company creation.  There are so many urgent and demanding issues organizations face as they struggle to establish traction and stability in the marketplace.  Culture always seems to take a back seat in development.  From my experience, it is only when culture becomes a problem that there is a conscious effort to address the situation.  By that time it is like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier traversing the Suez Canal.  The constraints of the business make it a formidable task that no one wants to get in front of in order to resolve.

Another reason business culture tends to take on a seemingly uncontrolled life of its own is the lack of focus on culture in the development and execution of the strategic plan.  It simply isn’t a traditional core focus of senior management and it can be a difficult area to measure in an objective manner.  Perhaps industrial companies operating in the twentieth century could get away with ignoring this strategic imperative, but contemporary enterprises leveraging intellectual property for value creation can no longer afford to avoid the importance of culture.

The propagation of a creative, healthy culture begins with the expressed intention of authentic leadership.  Associates take their cue from the words and behaviors of their executives.  If leadership expresses a predatory, win at all cost philosophy, the behaviors of the organization will follow suit.  Nowhere is the old adage of reaping what one sows more accurately reflected than in the creation of organizational culture.  When associates buy-in to the vision, intention, and strategy, a corresponding, positive energy begins to resonate throughout a business.  As a business grows in size, the outer bands of this energy are subject to the laws of inertia.  A body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.  This is why culture demands attention early in the developmental stages of a business.  Once the initial, framing forces are unleashed they are very difficult to modulate.

The traditional definition of culture references shared values; this warrants a bit more discussion.  Culture is affected by the shared, living values of an organization.  There are two types of living values in a company; explicit shared values and implicit shared values.

Explicit values are best reflected through thoughtfully crafted Vision Statements and Mission Statements.  These formal articulations define who we are and where we’re going.  Unfortunately, these formal statements are often another area of peripheral focus, especially in emerging organizations (we’ll discuss creating powerful Vision and Mission Statements in detail in Chapter Six).  Explicit values are also reinforced through the language and focus expressed in standard operating procedures.  This emphasizes how we will act in the daily conduct of our business; how we will treat our customers and stakeholders and resonate with the sense of responsibility we have to those working around us.

Explicit values are almost always highly positive in their intention but they can be dramatically tempered by the implicit values of an organization.  These are the unwritten rules of a company and these unspoken values are capable of derailing the finest intentions.

Implicit values often emerge from ego and therefore are frequently based in fear, insecurity, and the desire to perpetuate positions of power.  Unwritten rules can cover a wide spectrum of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors in a company.  Expectations of dress, informal lines of communication throughout the hierarchy, subtle power influencers, and the evaluation criteria of performance are prime examples.  I’ve even experienced environments where the exercising of vested stock options was perceived to be a career killer by senior management!  This certainly wasn’t written anywhere, but it was clearly understood by everyone.

The example we’ve probably all experienced at one time or another is the existence of a good ole’ boy network in a company.  The existence of such cliques are, by definition, exclusive, rather than inclusive.  They disenfranchise talented associates and propagate office politics.  Such cliques often display passive-aggressive behaviors that exist only to serve the ego and selfish desires of individuals in an organization.

The consistent display of authentic leadership helps ensure the alignment of implicit values with organizational intention.  This makes sense as authentic leadership is not rooted in the ego.  Authentic leadership also cultivates empathy throughout the culture, a powerful and binding force of positive intention.  We’ll explore this in more detail in Chapter Eight.

It is impossible to parse out any one of the three key attributes of transformational performance.  They are all intertwined in the tapestry of the organization and require continuous attention over time.  With these concepts as our backdrop we can now begin to discuss the step-by-step process to transform your organization or lay the right foundation for your startup endeavor!

© Terry Murray, 2012.

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April 12, 2012 · 12:41 pm

Igniting Your Entrepreneurial Fire

Key Concept ~ While the cacophony of social media,  cloud technology, mobile apps, etc., continues the dominate the business landscape, the core fundamentals for success remain the same.  Over the next three blogs, I’d like to share the fundamentals I learned over my 25 year career in both corporate leadership roles and in entrepreneurial settings.  Your success will greatly be determined by three critical elements.  These next three blogs are an excerpt from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, which was cited in the March edition of the academic Journal For Economic Literature for its contribution to thought leadership and the field of business management.

Creating transformational performance is like igniting a fire; it requires three fundamental elements.  A fire requires a source of heat, fuel, and oxygen in order to burn.  Transformational performance requires authentic, conscious leadership (the heat), a visionary strategic plan (the fuel), and a creative culture that fully engages the entire workforce (the oxygen).

While transformational performance cannot occur without all three elements, the quality of leadership will greatly enhance or diminish both the ascendance and long-term success of a business.  The intensity of its energy and the clarity of its intention can emulate that of a paper match or an acetylene torch.

The quality of the strategic plan will influence sustainability and growth; it can take the form of seasoned hardwood or half-rotted pulp.  The final element, culture, can fan or extinguish the brightest leadership and the most thoughtful strategies.  Like oxygen, we cannot literally see culture, yet it is the air we all breathe.

~ Authentic Leadership

Leading a business requires a strong and unflinching sense of responsibility for the associates who depend upon your wisdom, integrity, and stewardship.  Their livelihoods, dreams, and aspirations are invested in your guidance.  This is a sacred trust.  Associates trust that you will do your best to ensure the health and vitality of the business.  The stronger their level of trust in your leadership, the more willing they will be to fully invest their time, energy, and enthusiasm in the success of the endeavor.  The level of authenticity a leader expresses in their daily interactions with people and in how they address challenging situations will have an enormous impact on execution.

Authenticity may sound like an unusual word to describe leadership, but its meaning reflects several key characteristics that are critical to successfully leading human beings.  There are three primary definitions of authenticity in the dictionary; the quality of being authentic, trustworthy or genuine, and the displaying of undisputed credibility.

The quality of being authentic begins with being true to one’s self.  This quality emerges through self reflection and inner exploration and infers an active awareness of one’s consciousness.  The complete spectrum of who we are physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  This includes being in touch with, and trusting in, one’s own intuition.  We’ll explore the role of intuition further in Chapter Four.

At times, being true to one’s self isn’t easy.  It can test our moral courage.  In the late 1990’s while serving as the vice president of sales and marketing for a highly acquisitive life science company I experienced this conflict.  I found myself confronted with having to decide whether I would lead with authenticity or “go along to get along”.

Shortly after our company purchased a small manufacturing concern we found ourselves with two mid-level executives with overlapping responsibilities for managing our European sales business.  One was from our organization and one arrived with the acquired company.  The president of our company had sidestepped a decision on realigning responsibilities for two months.  The new executive was very political and focused much of his efforts and energy to develop a social relationship with the president, inviting him to play golf and entertaining him at his home.    After more than a year of diligent work on the part of our director to build our business in Europe the ambiguity began wearing on his emotions and productivity.

The situation left me uneasy at what I felt was inherently unfair.  At the very least, our director deserved a word of clarification on the issue.  Finally, on a Friday afternoon preceding our director leaving on a scheduled trip to meet with our European partners (who would be looking for direction and clarification as well) I felt compelled to address the situation with the president.  My inquiry infuriated the president who proceeded to lash out verbally.  I took some lumps and expended significant political capital, but my authentic concern for my direct report resonated throughout the sales and marketing organization, building trust and resulting in measurably marked improvements in sales performance.

As the years progressed, I began to realize my sensibilities of leadership didn’t correlate with what I was consistently experiencing in Corporate America.  While my performance was frequently lauded by my superiors, I would eventually find myself at odds with the status quo.  Somehow, my presence made my fellow executives uncomfortable.  Our intentions didn’t match.  I eventually came to the realization I didn’t belong in this environment and made the decision to strike out on my own and start a business focusing on coaching entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy, and business process.  In discovering and following my authentic self I now work from a position of service that has created the greatest joy and satisfaction I have ever experienced in my life!

The second definition of authenticity is “trustworthy or genuine”.  Trust is an energy that flows in a circular orbit.  It cannot move in one direction without returning to whence it came.  Some people allow themselves to trust more readily than others, but once trust has been broached it is often nearly impossible to mend.

Cultivating a trustworthy environment dispels people’s fears and calms insecurities.  It enables people to function in the moment without worrying about the repercussions of making an honest mistake.  The legendary salesman and early leader of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, was once quoted as saying, “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

Sometimes we learn more from our mistakes and allowing for the occasional mistake without the anticipation or fear of punishment builds trust.  Trusting associates empowers people to work from their heart which draws upon the energy of positive intention.  It opens the door to passionate engagement and reveals the hidden workforce lying quietly just beneath the surface in many businesses.  Creating an environment that encourages mature, thoughtful risk-taking delivers returns that far exceed any potential losses.

In the context of our discussion, the definition of “genuine” refers to being from the original stock or lineage, of being a genuine human being.  This implies we see each other as universally and energetically connected as a single entity of creation.  In doing so, we are able to express empathy for one another as easily and openly as we are able to care about our selves.  The resonant power of empathy consistently expressed by leadership cannot be overestimated.  It conveys genuine concern and respect for an associate’s well-being.  In doing so, it lowers barriers and engages the heart as well as the mind.  It is something we all can relate to.  Ask yourself, how much more are you willing to do for someone that genuinely cares about you?

Several years ago I was engaged in a strategic planning project with an immersive learning company.  They focused on teaching empathy in health care environments in response to malpractice lawsuits.  The financial exposure the risk of malpractice introduces to insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians’ practices has resulted in extensive, scientific research into the reasons why people sue.  We tapped into this research as part of our planning process and what we discovered was very surprising.  It turns out people sue based upon how they feel they were treated after a medical error had occurred and not directly because of the error itself.  Patients and patients’ families that were treated with empathy were significantly less likely to sue.  That’s a powerful statement.  In the midst of experiencing one of the most severe health and emotional crisis humans may encounter, empathy was the balm that soothed the intensity of a catastrophic medical event.  Imagine the power empathy can have in an everyday business environment!

The third definition of authenticity is “undisputed credibility”, which emphasizes the importance of being impeccable with your word and ensuring the consistent alignment of your actions with your words.  Walking the walk and talking the talk.  In the noble words of St. Francis of Assisi, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

One of the fastest ways to disengage a workforce is for leadership to display behavior that is inconsistent with their words.  It conveys the existence of double standards; one for associates and a separate, privileged set of standards for executives.  If you want associates to perform at a high level then live, work, and consistently display that level in your own behavior.  Keep in mind it is human nature to remember the missteps.  You can be consistently credible 99% of the time but it will be the one time you are inconsistent with your word that associates will remember.

Another powerful, yet often overlooked attribute of authentic leadership is the ability to sense and respect people’s boundaries.  Hierarchical leadership has a tendency to create boundaries that run in one direction.  Actually, they are more like barriers than boundaries.  Barriers that create a set of expectations that govern behavior and one-directional communication that are meant to sustain authority and control.  Projecting a lack of respect for the boundaries of subordinates causes emotional barriers to be erected.  As emotional barriers come up associate engagement goes down.  Conversely, enabling the creation of healthy boundaries engages associates’ sense of worth and creativity.

People need to feel secure in their own space; this extends to emotional and intellectual space as well as physical space.  When people are able to create and maintain a container of self their creativity will blossom.  When physical space is constrained, such as when cubicles are used for workspace, fostering healthy emotional and mental boundaries is even more important to fully engage associates.  Authority figures that roll over these boundaries lead people to freeze up and withdraw, working while keeping their heads down to avoid further transgressions into their comfort zone.  Giving associates the space to think and, at the appropriate time, to simply be, engages the imagination and the heart.  The consistent expression of authentic leadership will rapidly reveal previously unseen opportunities for the organization.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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March 28, 2012 · 12:28 pm

The Transformational Entrepreneur Cited in the Academic Journal of Economic Literature

For Immediate Release – March 28, 2012 -

Terry Murray’s groundbreaking book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Business Breakthrough Success” was recognized and cited in the peer-reviewed, academic Journal of Economic Literature’s March 2012 quarterly issue.

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today that their founder and Managing Partner’s book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur”was recognized and cited in the academic Journal of Economic Literature for its contribution to professional business literature and thought leadership.

“We received the unsolicited notification letter from the Journal last week,” responded Mr. Murray. “It was both humbling and exciting at the same time.  I’ve been working on the business side of the life sciences, medical technology and health care sectors since 1988, so I have an enormous appreciation for the diligence of peer-reviewed, academic journals.  As a business executive, and not an academic, this is a distinct honor for my book to be recognized for its contribution to the field of business and economic professional literature.”

The Journal of Economic Literature is published by the American Economic Association (AEA), a professional organization of economists, academics, and business thought leaders with more than 22,000 members.

“My executive career has spanned some truly remarkable changes in the global business landscape,” added Terry.  ”Historically, there’s always been a lag in leadership, strategy and organizational philosophy in response to market shifts in value creation.  I entered the biotechnology world during its infancy.  This was the beginning of the knowledge-based economy and coincided with the boom in personal computing.  Yet the methods, perspectives, and philosophies we were trained for in business school all emerged out of the Industrial Age.  We literally had to discover a new approach to business as usual along the way, but it is only today, some 25 years later, that the strategic imperative of human creativity in business is beginning to move into the mainstream.”

“The Transformational Entrepreneur” will also be indexed in the American Economic Association’s internet database, EconLit, which is accessible at libraries and universities around the world, as well as to licensed institutions and AEA members.  The electronic bibliography indexes over 120 years of economics literature from around the world.  The database complies professional journal articles, collective volume articles, working papers, dissertations, and books of note on the subject of economics and business practice.

“The shift in the source of value creation truly began in the 1980s, but information technology bridged the productivity gap for thirty years, masking the need for a change in the approach to  leadership, strategy and organizational development.  By the turn of the century it was already beginning to hit a point of diminishing returns, right at the time the explosively disruptive power of the internet began to take off.  Even old world industries are doing business in ways they never could have anticipated ten years ago,” commented Terry.

Mr. Murray went on to say, “Perhaps because I was immersed in the knowledge-based economy for so long I saw the need for a more human-centric approach to business.  Research scientists, physicians and engineers, and their creative talents, are the raw material for value creation and competitive advantage in this new era of business.  You cannot lead creatives the same way we once managed assembly line workers.  Two years after I began writing my book, the IBM Global CEO Survey exemplified the perspective and approach I was writing about at the time, reporting that creativity and the ability to cultivate creativity throughout the workplace was the single most important attribute CEOs are looking for in future leaders.”

Terry’s book was published two months after IBM released the results of their bi-annual survey in December of 2010.

About the author ~ Terry Murray is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and professional business advisor/coach with twenty-five years of progressive experience in strategic development, executive leadership, and the deployment of highly profitable business teams. His work with Fortune 1000 and startup companies has directly contributed more than $1 billion in market capitalization growth throughout his career.

He is the founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC™, a professional and strategic development firm focused on igniting breakthrough performance by optimizing and aligning authentic leadership, mindful strategy, and an engaging, creative organizational culture.  The company’s evidence-based programs and pragmatic approach employs their proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠.  This innovative, developmental process integrates concepts from published research in the neurosciences, emotional intelligence, performance psychology, quantum physics and Applied Behavioral Economics with Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning.

For more information, please visit http://ignitingcreativityinbusiness.com.

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.


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March 22, 2012 · 9:49 pm

The Correlation Between Coherence, Flow and Productivity

Key Concept ~ Most entrepreneurs share a common attribute; a burning sense of urgency.  While intrinsic motivation is critical for someone striking out on their own or stepping up to launch and lead a startup business, some balance is required as well. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and how we regulate our own energy, focus and activities has a bearing on long-term success.

If you’re an entrepreneur you’re probably fairly familiar with eighty to one hundred hour work weeks, juggling multiple priorities concurrently, and literally living your business at times.  If our own fire in the belly isn’t enough motivation, the constrained resources, limited bandwidth, competing priorities, and competitive pressures of leading a startup quickly remind us…there’s always work to be done.  The question is, what happens to our productivity, our ability to creatively leverage our vision, business acumen and experience for the benefit of the business, when we simply find ourselves running too hard?

We all do it at times.  I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a habitual offender.  It started in college.  I launch my first company my junior year at business school and would commonly work sixty hours a week while going to college full time.  By my second semester I scheduled all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which in my mind, left a complete five day work week for the business!  I was the classic young man in a hurry.  I did the same thing in corporate, working eighty to hundred hour weeks, flying 100,000 miles a year, and not taking a real vacation during a five year stretch.

My wife kindly forwarded an article to me last week that referenced a host of research studies, some going as far back as 1914 (Henry Ford conducted internal research on productivity, costs, and labor hours), all demonstrating how rapidly human productivity declines after working for eight hours a day or more than forty hours a week.  Winston Churchill recognized this during the war and devised a clever work schedule to maximize his productivity and meet the demands of the Prime Minister fighting the Axis powers on a global front.  He would rise early and work until mid-day, at which time he would go home, take a bath (while giving dictation to his secretary sitting just outside the ajar door), and then a long nap.  He would then go back to work until late into the night.  He was also known to have commented there’s never a good time to take a vacation.  Take one anyways.  And he practiced this even during the darkest years of the war.

The research referenced in the article made a pretty strong argument, and I’m not one to argue with Mr. Churchill, but there was still a part of me that was thinking, yea, well how do you explain my success…it was directly associated with my effort, right?  My wife kindly reminded me that all of our company professional development programs and workshops are based upon peer-reviewed research.  She then added, “Ignoring research on productivity wouldn’t be very authentic, would it?”

So I took the weekend off.

Let’s face it, sometimes a forty hour work week is impossible for us.  But at what cost to our productivity?   One thing is for certain, entrepreneurs would be well served to cultivate emotional resiliency in order to maintain our own optimal level of productivity.  This is a core focus of our programs and workshops; the cultivation of competencies in emotional intelligence.  Building our self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management skills places us onto the path to self-mastery.  There are actual, biological underpinnings that we can positively influence, for ourselves and those around us, that directly effect our productivity as well as our health (another critical factor, entrepreneurs can rarely afford the time to be sick).

Those capable of self-mastery, of mindfully engaging their emotional landscape (internally and externally), experience multi-dimensional benefits.  First, they experience the physiological and psychological benefit called coherence.1   Coherence occurs when the oscillatory systems of the body (i.e. heart beat, respiratory rate, blood pressure, brain waves) synchronize and become entrained together in frequency.2  Coherence improves physiological function on a biochemical and metabolic level.  We all know that unhealthy levels of stress have a negative impact on our immune system and the health of our heart.  Being in a state of coherence is believed to have the opposite effect.

Achieving coherence also has a positive impact on cognitive ability.  When we are fully engaged and enjoying what we are doing we enter what renowned researcher and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow.  Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research looked into the psychological state of a wide variety of professionals operating at peak performance.  When they were fully engaged, focused, and enjoying their endeavor, their biochemistry reflected an increase in cortisol (from the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal, or HPA axis) which brought them to a place in which they were taking full advantage of their cognitive and/or physical abilities.  If the HPA axis shot past this point due to stress, adrenaline and cortisol levels continued to rise and performance rapidly diminished.  His work proved that a person’s emotional state is a governing factor in cognitive and physical performance.

Still another benefit of coherence is its effect on our ability to positively engage and motivate those around us.  When we express empathy for another being, entrainment of each person’s physiological rhythms ensues.  Research conducted by Drs. Levenson and Gottman at UC Berkeley observed this phenomena between spouses.3  Research conducted by Carl Marci at Harvard University documented similar results of coherence and physiological entrainment between patients and psychotherapists during expressed moments of empathy by the therapist.4  When people connect emotionally we actually connect physiologically as well.

All of these things profoundly effect our productivity as entrepreneurs and leaders.  We’re all different, but cultivating the self-awareness to see when we’re pushing ourselves past optimal flow can help us self-regulate and maintain our productivity by taking our foot off the gas, even if for a moment.

1.)  R. McCraty, M. Atkinson, “Psychophysiological Coherence”, D, McCraty R, Wilson BC, eds. Emotional Sovereignty. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, forthcoming.

2.)  R. McCraty, “The Energetic Heart – Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People”.  Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA., 2003.

3.)  R. Levenson, A. Ruef, “Physiological Aspects of Emotional Knowledge and Rapport”, In: W. Ickes, ed. Empathic Accuracy, Guilford Press, New York, New York 1997.

4.)  C. Marci, “Psychophysiology and Psychotherapy:  The Neurobiology of Human Relatedness”, Practical Reviews of Psychiatry,  2002; 25(3).

5.)  M. Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons”, Annual Review of Psychology, 2009.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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February 16, 2012 · 4:06 pm

Why Our Intention Should be a Strategic Imperative

Key Concept ~ We need but look around us to see that the predatory, exclusionary business mindset of the 20th century no longer serves our best interests.  This fabric of the industrial age has grown threadbare.  The research that reveals the current leadership crisis is reaping the seeds it has sown by cultivating an endemic employee disengagement crisis.  Our intention truly matters, it is what resonates in the hearts of those we lead, and those with whom we wish to do business.

I was reading through the newly posted discussion threads from the groups I belong to on LinkedIn this morning and two in particular really struck me.  The first one was on a spiritually-oriented discussion group.  The individual that had started the group posted a rather scathing declaration that no promotional activity is acceptable in the group.  I can understand this, to a certain extent, as we’ve all been involved in discussion groups that are spammed and this can become more than a bit annoying.  But LinkedIn is, after all, a business social media site.  It isn’t Facebook, so shouldn’t we understand why people are on the site?  Because they have a business interest of some sort or another.  I know this is a fine line…one never wants to come off as a shill, and most discussion groups do have a promotions’ section.

What I found rather ironic about this particular post was how it was signed by the person that posted it…the individual’s name and “Group Owner”…on a spiritually-oriented group.  The individual also signs their name with one of those peculiar sequences that can appear, at least to me, to run like alphabet soup…CGI, BMOC, BPOE, ABCDEFG…Isn’t this a form of self promotion?  My point is, between expressing “ownership” and the presentation of credentials with signature, of which I have no idea of what they mean,  left me feeling a sense incongruity of intention.  My background is in the life sciences, so I truly appreciate when someone signs their name with Ph.D. after it…it represents a truly significant accomplishment. But isn’t our growing obsession with becoming certified, often by trade groups that are mere marketing organizations, just another form of promotion?  True certification indicates you have journeyed through an accredited school or training program that is recognized and meets the educational standards of a state board of education.

The other discussion group that was started was by a business coach offering to share the “Dirty Dozen”, his tips for making money in coaching.  The language caused me to recoil. Not cognitively so much, but on a deeper, emotional level. From my perspective, business coaching should resonate with positive intention, holding the space for both personal and professional growth for the one being coached. They’re both so closely intertwined, and many of the problems we see in business today are because people and their firm are thoroughly disengaged.

I read a study released late last year that indicated only 14% of employees believe their company shares their own personal values and beliefs. How can authentic engagement emerge in that type of climate?

I also deeply believe coaching should be highly inclusive. When I followed this gentleman’s link, I had to provide a litany of contact information before I could read what he had to say. For me, this again resonates with intention. I felt like this gentleman was trolling for prospects rather than reaching out with positive intention to share his wisdom. Please understand, my intention is not to be judgmental, it is simply meant to share what resonates within me when I hit landing pages that are a mile long, or must join another mailing list to access something that may have peaked my interest.

It’s readily apparent that the old ways of doing business no longer serve the broader interests of community and society. As Einstein so apply stated, “We cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.”

Coaching is built upon relationship. Relationship emerges when we first connect cognitively (as I did when I was drawn to this coach’s discussion thread). Then we engage emotionally (which I couldn’t do because I felt a sense of coercion…I was offered a transactional deal for knowledge…I had to give something first, before I could receive the original offer…prior to seeing the actual value proposition).  Finally, we inspire and motivate others by touching the human spirit. With authenticity and transformational intention.

We all must make a living in this material world, I do not provide all of my business coaching services for free. But I do share my knowledge for free. This resonates with people, they feel my intention. If we look to the lessons from Applied Behavioral Economics we can fully appreciate that 70% of economic decision making is emotionally-driven, often unknowingly.  Intention truly matters.

I ask, as you head out into your business landscape to step away from business as usual, for just a moment and ask yourself how is my intention resonating with my prospects, associates, and colleagues?  It may open a door for a fresh approach that can truly drive sustainable, meaningful success!

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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February 14, 2012 · 2:13 pm

Finding Your Way Into Professional Journals ~ Performance Transformation, LLC™ Featured in MPI’s Meeting Planners Guide to Hawaii

Key Concept ~ A few months ago I posted a blog entitled, “Building Your Market Presence Brick-by-Brick”.  The process is one defined by persistence, and in my opinion, authentic intention.  By putting your firm out there, to generously provide your products or services for the parts of our community that are in need or at risk, good things can happen.  Not only for the community, but for your firm as well.  By bringing our pro bono Warriors in Transition program, which we began back in 2009, to Hawaii last October, we found ourselves in a feature article of ONE+, the professional journal of Meeting Planners International.  Positive intention, not from the ego but from the heart, resonates with others.  In expressing our intention to support combat veterans and their families, we found our message in the hands of 30,000 professional meeting planners we may have never reached in any other way.

Here’s our press release discussing the article in the MPI Meeting Planners Guide to Hawaii.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today their founder and Managing Partner, Terry Murray, is to be featured in February’s edition of MPI’s  Meeting Guide to Hawaii.  The professional journal ONE+ has monthly circulation of 30,000 professional meeting planners.  The article, written by Elaine Pofeldt, focuses on the value of revisiting Hawaii as a viable and economical option for professional meeting events.

“We were really excited to receive the call from Elaine to be interviewed for her article,”  commented Terry Murray.  ”The series of workshops we conducted last October in Hawaii couldn’t have been more successful.”

In the article, Terry is quoted as saying, “Hawaii is a perfect setting for our programs.  Our developmental approach focuses on building competencies in emotional intelligence to improve leadership and team cohesion.  So, for us, the Aloha Spirit reflects and aligns with our philosophy and approach.”

The root meaning of Aloha comes from three Polynesian words.  Alo,which means sharing in the present moment.  Oha, which means joyous affection.  And Ha, which means the life energy of the breath.  The traditional greeting of Hawaiians involves an exhale of breath with each other to emphasize the Aloha Spirit.

“The traditional approaches towards leadership development and team building are no longer delivering the results our rapidly changing, multi-cultural business world demands, ” comments Terry.  ”Our evidence-based programs are designed to build presence, rapport and authentic empathy in our next generation of leaders.  These are the keys to inspiring teams of knowledge workers, to creating genuine engagement  Cultivating competencies the embrace inclusion and ignite cohesion are the keys to unleashing human creativity, the key driver of value creation in the 21st century economy.”

Performance Transformation was brought to Oahu by the nonprofit Palmarie Community Transformational Alliance to provide leadership development and team building workshops for their leadership team and launch Performance Transformation’s award-winning “Warriors in Transition” program.  The program is designed to assist active duty military personal, veterans, and their families successfully navigate the stress of the deployment cycle and eventual transition back to civilian life.  The program received a formal commendation by General David Petraeus in 2010 for “helping to create emotionally resilient families.”

“By the time our involvement in the the wars in the Afghanistan and Iraq finally wind down approximately two million of our fellow citizens will have been deployed in these combat zones,” adds Terry. “The VA is simply overwhelmed by the needs of so many of our veterans that are returning home with PTSD, or with the poly-traumatic effects of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.  It’s up the community to step up and lend a hand to help these brave Americans transition home and find their way back to living successful and fulfilling lives.  To be able to once again enjoy the things their service has enabled us to enjoy, undisturbed these past eleven years.”

The VA estimates the rate of PTSD to be somewhere between 18% to 24% with OEF/OIF combat veterans.  Additional research indicates combat stress is impacting spouses and family members as well.   Performance Transformation’s innovate approach partners with licensed therapist to conduct Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy.  The approach enables Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to be conducted in real time, and with horses, instead of a traditional office setting.

“We discovered the CBT benefits during our presentation at the 18th Annual Military and Civilian Combat Stress Conference in L.A. in 2010,” adds Mr. Murray. “Most recently, we’re discovering our approach to working with horses also aligns seamlessly with Gestalt Therapy as well.  It’s an exciting time to be involved in Equine Facilitated Learning and in support of Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy.”

The concentration of the military in Hawaii presents unique challenges in the community.  It is estimated that 40% of Hawaii’s homeless population is comprised of veterans.  During their visit, Performance Transformation had the opportunity to introduce their approach to Councilman Tom Berg, who is working diligently in support of the islands veteran community.

“To come to the islands with such positive intention, and to have felt the Aloha Spirit directly in support of our work truly resonated with us all,” said Terry. “Last year we conducted various professional development workshops in Florida, Montana, and Colorado, but Hawaii was truly special.  The fact that we were able to conduct our programs at Equine808, the islands’ first and only horse rescue organization in support their mission added to our Aloha Spirit experience.”

You’re welcome to click here to learn more about Performance Transformation’s leadership development and team building workshops they conducted in Hawaii with a sequence of photographs of their approach with the horses.

Photo courtesy of Precision Photography of Honolulu.

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.

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January 26, 2012 · 7:50 pm

Still Swimming Against the Currents of Change?

Key Concept ~ Salmon will fight to swim against the most ferocious of currents to fulfill their life’s purpose.  In doing so, they inevitably exhaust their entire energy and die.  Sometimes we can feel like we’re swimming upstream against a torrent of unprecedented change.  For most of human history, change unfolded at a relatively modest pace.  Brief periods of upheaval, usually caused by our doing, were followed by languid periods of stability.  The Industrial Revolution catapulted us out of this historical pattern, but the pace of change over the past 150 years pales in comparison to what we’re experiencing today.  Here are some thoughts as to how we can turn the tables on our tumultuous times and create an abundant, rewarding life for ourselves.

Human beings evolved slowly over tens of thousands of years.  Research into our mitochondrial DNA actually points to roots that may go back some two million years.  Mother nature is a brilliant architect.  Where balance and successful life systems emerge, she builds upon them.  When systems fail to adapt to changing conditions, they fall by the wayside.  Our brains evolved in a wondrous sequence of survival.  Survival that enabled us the time for our brains to evolve to the complex mechanisms they are today.  Just ask the Neanderthals how much more adaptive we were than they…well, I guess that question must remain hypothetical.

The modern human brain evolved in four distinct phases, each building upon the success of the previous evolutionary structure.  It began with what many researchers call our reptilian brain.  The part of our brain that quietly controls the billions, if not trillions of microscopic interactions that keep us alive every day.  It is what allows our basic, biological functions to occur beneath our threshold of consciousness.  Occasionally, someone might have to “remind us to breathe”, but we don’t have to think about pumping our heart, filtering our blood, or fighting off minor infections.  This part of our brain can only process what is happening in the present moment.

Upon this scaffolding came our old mammalian brain, the limbic system.  This introduced our ability to experience emotions and cognition.  We began to think, and we now could learn, on a limited level, from our experiences.  This part of our brain also functions in the present, but now could remember the past.  Survival lessons often anchored to an emotional response of some sort of external stimuli.  Next came what is called our new mammalian brain.  With this advancement came verbal capabilities, and the emergence of our intellect.  We could now embrace the concepts of past, present, and future.  This part of our brain takes up five times more space in our cranium that the older two sections combined.

And this is the part of our brain that has gotten us into trouble.  With the concept of future comes the ease in which anxiety can enter our lives.  I love Temple Grandin’s comment about the difference between fear and anxiety.  To paraphrase her, fear is what occurs when we’re walking through the desert and step on a snake.  Anxiety emerges when we’re walking through the desert thinking about the possibility of stepping on a snake.*  Present versus future.  The other problem the new mammalian brain has introduced is our ability to create a technologically advanced society that has removed us from our natural setting, continuously thrusts us into volatile, highly complex environments, and has outpaced our emotional and psychological evolution.  Nothing over the millenia of human history and experience has prepared us for the world we live in today.

Thankfully, the most recent part of our brain to develop holds the key; the prefrontal cortex.  Right behind our foreheads lies an executive center.  It is the intersection of our entire neural network.  This is where, as Dr. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant research into Emotional Intelligence shows us, we can develop a higher level of consciousness that can orchestrate balance, mindful behavior, and compassion.  For our selves as well as for those around us.  Recent discoveries from the neurosciences demonstrates we have plasticity in our brain.  We can create entirely new neural networks that, by quite literally changing our thinking, we can change our being.  Research also shows us that 80% of our success in life can be attributed to how well we develop our prefrontal cortex through mindful practice.  The other 20% is rooted in our cognitive and intellectual abilities.

These skills can be learned throughout our lifetimes.  This learning can be accomplished through meditation, yogic practice, or other self-reflective activities.  Our firm happens to teach how to cultivate these abilities through experiential learning with horses by employing The Epona Approach™.  In fact, we have an upcoming open enrollment workshop called Transition as Transformation (you’re welcome to click on the link to learn more about it).

The specially designed, ground-based exercises with the horses help illuminate a path towards higher consciousness.  Horses act as emotional mirrors for humans, without judgement, opening a door to an infinite space of reflective learning.  From this place we can release the anxiety of tumultuous change, alleviate the pressures of modern life, and help each of us rediscover our authentic self.  In doing so, we resonate differently with others, be they business partners, customers, prospects, family members, or friends.  The horses demonstrate and model how we can be highly aware (they are prey animals, always on the alert for predators), yet at peace with ourselves and our hectic, noisy, often exhausting world.  As we like to say in our workshops, the horses can teach us how to return to grazing!

*From “Animals Make Us Human”, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Orlando, FL, 2009.

Special thanks and acknowledgement for some of the concepts shared within this blog goes to Joseph Chilton Pearce from his book, “The Biology of Transcendence ~ A Blueprint of the Human Spirit”, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 2002.  You can find all of Dr. Daniel Goleman’s books on Emotional Intelligence on Amazon and most bookstores.  You can also watch his fascinating presentation at Google University thanks to YouTube. 

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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