| Chant Construction, a dam-building company with 45 employees had been owed nearly $10 million for over three years by a ‘well-heeled’ client, an electricity utility. Not surprisingly Ted, its chief executive and sole owner and its founder 7 years before, felt furious, and also alarmed because this unpaid debt was holding up launch of the Employee Share Ownership Plan he had long promised his employees. Although he had learned to manage these strong emotions extraordinarily well, Ted knew they were adversely affecting his decision-making. So, when Peter Wales (pseudonym), a consulting broker, introduced him in 2006 to the author, whom Peter knew had done good work in similar circumstances, Ted was intrigued. We began with an interview involving Ted's director of human resources, following which I prepared a substantial 7-section proposal that laid out a trade-off between desired outcome and investment by the client. Ted and I then reviewed this proposal and refined it into a firm contract. We then began weekly 2-3 hour coaching sessions over the course of which Ted described the circumstances he faced and I encouraged him to make these descriptions increasingly detailed and accurate by introducing him to the "I have X emotion now” (IHXEN) form of I-statement. Because this form of I-statement, whose acronym IHXEN is pronounced 'Eye-Zen', is not the form of I-statement most commonly used, yet is also the focus of this narrative, readers unfamiliar with the field of linguistics will probably want to know at least some of the theory supporting the use of IHXENs rather than the more usual form of I- statement in English, which is the "I am 'X adjectival phrase'" (IAXAP) form. I have therefore provided, in the narrative following, the briefest possible summary of the theory that supports their use. Because the narrative uses the word 'equanimity', I trust readers of this page who are only vaguely familiar with the word 'equanimity will want, before continuing to read this narrative of a coaching engagement facilitated by IHXENs, first to study this link carefully -- it's a link from which you will find a return to this page near its end. Ted, an engineer by profession, worked with me, at moments of doubt or forms of anxiety, to practice IHXEN exchanges in coaching sessions of two to three hours every week for a few months. This practice, by making our relationship an unusually safe place, facilitated release and sharing of many intuitions and memories that would have been considered either 'bad form' or irrelevant in ordinary business conversation. We were then able to put this shared material to practical use by testing it against objective data, which in turn empowered us together to refine it into what seemed to both of us relevant and reliable insight into the enterprise survival problem that the overdue receivable constituted for Ted, who, before founding Chant, had been a very senior executive in a large and very well-known construction firm. Ted found these sessions cleared and grounded his thinking -- as the testimonial at the end of this page confirms. As our ease and confidence with the practice of IHXEN exchanges grew, Ted and I were able to focus our attentions on exploring drafts of an email aimed at interesting the utility president in meeting Ted; and Ted soon felt enough confidence in this process to instruct the lawyer with whom he was working on the legal side of the issues not to initiate any further activity on the utility file. At the same time, he acquired enough trust in me to ask that I work with his corporate staff to see if we could feel comfortable proposing his Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) in advance of the next annual general meeting. The ESOP was a major part of Ted’s founding vision for the company. It was, in fact, a project he and his senior staff had been working on with an ESOP consultant for two years. But, pending a satisfactory resolution of the outstanding utility receivable, no senior person had felt comfortable proposing to Chant employees at large the specifics of what had earlier been agreed as reasonable ESOP terms with the ESOP consultant. Indeed, at the time of my engagement, only Ted was able to retain any hope that the utility receivable issue would ever actually be satisfactorily resolved. In these rather unpromising circumstances I suggested that the existing ESOP offering terms would be more attractive to employees if they were to include a social contract binding employees and their leaders more closely in explicitly described shared aspirations. Such a contract could become a written commitment by all levels to personal growth by dedication to a desirable set of corporate value disciplines. Honesty might be an example of such a value discipline. It might be defined, as in fact Authentix Coaches had already defined it for clients in prior coaching engagements, as: Honesty: The discipline of avoiding either inaccuracy or deception and of being reciprocally open about intents and evolving intentions. By sharing with the senior group the Authentix list of eight definitions for such personal-professional values -- ones that Authentix Coaches had developed and practised over many years as disciplines toward which Authentix clients and their coaches could both aspire in our relationships, I anticipated that Chant would be able to give practical form to the corporate social contract I was envisioning. I now envisioned the list as offering a blueprint for increasing the level of trust each Chant person would feel able safely to repose in other members of the organization. I therefore proposed inserting a preface to the existing ESOP draft – one that would explicitly commit Chant people to adopting defined value disciplines as an aspiration toward which all could work. I also suggested we start with the eight value- discipline definitions adopted in Authentix coaching engagements. Feedback on this idea from the senior group resulted in their approval of all eight of the Authentix definitions, and a lively debate – one facilitated by IHXENs – then ensued concerning other value disciplines that the team collectively felt were necessary for Chant’s particular 'economic niche'. These debates were concluded by a consensus around a total of 15 values – values we expected could be elaborated into a 'ladder' of disciplines to which Chant people, both junior and senior, would all want to aspire. We visualized the ladder becoming a part of Chant's employee performance review process. The ESOP team then asked me to thread the descriptions of the new value disciplines into a preface to their document of Offer to Employees. When I had done this to their satisfaction, Ted added to the credibility of the new value disciplines by having their descriptions framed and displayed prominently in Chant's offices. The ESOP team then went ahead with the ESOP launch. The results? First, everyone involved in these discussions felt a surge of confidence that coherence between Ted and his prospective employee shareholders would more easily be found in the ongoing problem-solving activities of the company; and second, the ESOP launch (a couple of months later) attracted -- without change to any of its pre-existing commercial terms -- 'buy-ins' by 90% of 'confirmed' employees. (By way of comparison, 90% is about three times the average for ESOP launches in the United States). Shortly thereafter, our IHXEN-facilitated sessions culminated in our production of a draft for the email to the utility president. But before sending it, Ted and I wanted to be very sure that both his and my states of being in relation to sending the email were, given the email’s significance for Chant’s survival, truly equanimous. This requirement was not easy to satisfy because neither of us was entirely sure how he could distinguish genuine equanimity from states of being close to it. We knew that equanimity lay somewhere between pleasant and unpleasant emotions yet was not what one might call 'numbed-out' indifference nor what one might call carefully controlled bravado. Moreover, from our practice of IHXEN exchanges, we had become minutely aware of each of our emotions in relation to each significant part of our draft. Working in this way, our practice of IHXEN exchanges eventually led us both feeling satisfied that each of us had found equanimity rather than 'controlled indifference or bravado' in relation to the specific of sending the draft. How this happened is worth noting carefully. The day before Ted sent the email, I told him that I felt equanimous about him sending it, and asked him what emotion he had about doing so. He replied: "I too feel I have equanimity" (phrasing only from my memory). I then suggested he might not have equanimity after sleeping on it, in which case he might want again to change it. So we parted with the unanimity that he would sleep on it, and that, if he felt anything but equanimity in the morning in relation to sending the draft he would make the change he then believed was necessary and, if he then felt the slightest doubt about sending the result, he would call me and we would again discuss it. A few days later I learned he had sent the draft we had agreed on the previous day, and that the utility president had replied by email requesting that he visit Ted. The entire process took us almost six months. But, to our delight, the utility president responded immediately by visiting Ted and making a starting settlement offer of $3 million. As all lawyers know, this progress meant that Chant could safely assume that most of the remaining $7 million would soon be settled reasonably amicably. This knowledge naturally relieved a lot of anxiety on the part not only of Ted, who was then able to pass the issue over to his lawyer, but also of Chant's employees, and me. Ted had turned the corner for Chant Construction from what might be described as gamely brave but dudgeonly frustration at the top and anxiety below to fruitful negotiation and confidence in future Team Chant coherence throughout the organization. Our practice, at moments of particular difficulty in decision-making, of the IHXEN linguistic, which is the cornerstone of what I now call the 'Eye-Zen English' family of Rational Emoto-Linguistics, had, together with our personal experience of what the word 'equanimity' symbolizes in PRACTICAL terms, facilitated his and my discovery of the 'crucial difference'. Together, we had empowered Ted to transform the energy of his anger and alarm – at the utility's unconscienable ignorance of the plight in which its executives had left his company – into rationally purposeful and, in the event, very productive energy on a wide but coherent 'front'. Practice of the IHXEN linguistic was not on its own responsible for this result, which was all the more astonishing because it was quite unexpected by virtually all involved. The people who used this practice also contributed many specialty skills of their own to produce the engagement’s success. What practice of the IHXEN linguistic had done was help the people involved become consciously aware of the emotions that from time to time would – had they not practiced IHXEN exchanges – have otherwise diverted them from focusing on constructively productive problem-solving. By acquiring some proficiency in exchanging IHXENs, they were able to transform the energy of their emotions into trustingly connected and productively purposeful teamwork. .. |
| Proficiency in the IHXEN Psycho-Linguistic: Achieving Balance to 'Make the Difference' -- an ROI summary and brief engagement narrative (c) 2007-2013 by Angus Cunningham Principal, Authentix Coaches |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Visits to this URL: 442 Latest Update: 130319 |
* * * This has been a narrative by the coach in this engagement and the author of this URL page. What then does the client, Ted Chant, have to say about his coach? Shortly before he learned of the success of the email he sent to the CEO of his customer, the electric utility, this was Ted's written testimony: |
| "Combining corporate productivity with personal well-being has always been more art than science, and hence a seemingly inaccessible goal to many. We began our quest for work nirvana 7 years ago knowing that an Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) would be a part of it. Having helped my corporate team reach and communicate the balance among interests that a successful ESOP requires, Authentix Coaches’ Angus Cunningham is now helping us realize larger aims through the growing of an organically constructive culture, in which the values we bring from our home, workplace and marketplace experiences are refined into an equitable, coherent and vital whole. Having a 2-hour coaching session each week with Angus is to find one turning the relentless pressure of today’s working world into clarifying insights, intriguing intuitions, and focused initiatives in which one feels a welcome degree of inner confidence, and often renewed energy. Each session enables me to reframe my sense of what is occurring in my world with such accuracy that my setting of priorities and decision-making is not only making my own life, and those of my family members, less workaholic, but also beginning to make the working lives of all our employees more productive and enjoyable. Having Angus coach us through the many transitions we know we now both must and want to make is giving us, when the going gets tough, confidence that we “have it in ourselves” to realize shockingly excellent success!" -- Ted Chant, February, 2007 |
| Cost/benefit of the Authentix service: an investment of under $30,000, plus perhaps $50,000 to $80,000 in internal opportunity costs, resulted in (a) recovery of a $10,000,000 receivable outstanding that had been threatening the client's survival for 3 years, (b) creation of a solid base (in a proven style of thorough problem-solving conversation) for a cooperative future provided by a spectacularly successful ESOP launch that generated much good will between the founder/owner, his employees and their overdue client, and (c) a pathway for achieving economic equity in a carelessly materialistic larger world. |
| The schematic below illustrates the architecture of how Eye-Zen English principles for problem-solving and needs-meeting conversation are a synthesis of prior psycho-linguistic disciplines. Click on this logo for a brief overview of these principles: |