Dorrier Underwood

I had been working with Joe, executive of an outdoor education adventure company for teenagers and their families, for about 6 months in an executive coaching engagement, meeting one on one about every 2 weeks and some email back and forth. We loved working together and working on his being a great leader, listening to parents’ concerns, raising money from donors who are looking for how to make a difference with family money or with their corporation’s philanthropy. While Joe complained about one of his staff over and over, I listened and wondered what am I going to say to cause a positive and useful shift in his thinking. At first I thought well she must be a real problem so I asked a few questions and couldn’t see what he was saying was the problem, the way she put things, the way she went on and on, the way she interrupted, the way she never made her point which were some of my pet peeves.  Not those things, just bothered by her thinking style, her presentation s...

As the first item of business on our company retreat, we wrapped up the sales game we’d been playing for three weeks. Jane, who had come up with the idea for a game, asked Gary and me to design a session for evaluating it, acknowledging the participants, and announcing the winners. Left to lead the conversation myself, the team would have experienced Boom, Boom, Boom – This is what we did. These are the results we produced. Here are things that X, Y, and Z did particularly well. The end. Thank God I didn’t take the opportunity to bore everyone to death with my bias to action and my understanding of “completion” as “an assignment to handle as quickly and efficiently as possible.” There’s something to be said for speed, but not when the bigger goal is opening up new actions that could prove more effective than anything we’ve tried before. I think of myself as someone who’s all about creativity and innovation, but am I?  I was charged with building on what we learned i...