What is the flavor of the comfort zone?
Ramón, do you know how to motivate a recently formed team of directors and executives from two rival companies that just merged? That was the question that the CEO of a large pastry group in Spain asked me while exploring the best way to have his company's kickoff for 2018. After sharing with him some ideas, he hired me for a four-hour workshop during the two-day kickoff retreat.
Call to adventure
I felt happy about having this assignment after a few months of launching my career as an executive coach in Barcelona. Most of my experience comes from being a serial entrepreneur, intrapreneur, and consultant. So my mind was excited with creative ideas coming and going like a stampede of mustangs. How to proceed?
The first thing that I did was go back to known business situations and imagine myself in the employees' situation. What kind of information and format would they enjoy having while leaving the session motivated and hopefully optimistic for the future?
Crossing the threshold
After having a brainstorming session with my fellow executive coach, and friend, Siobhán McCann from Midderigh Vox, I thought that the three main ingredients missing in the formula were: presence, purpose, and trust. Why are these ingredients are vital? Because each executive has a personal journey according to how he or she views her own situation in the company, and that requires presence. Because each team will interact with other groups and they should all have the same destination, and that involves purpose. And because each executive, in their respective team, will need to show their best in this challenging time and to bring new ideas, and that requires trust.
Each one of the ingredients was explained using stories and mostly by practicing the concepts during the workshop. After an initial and natural skepticism, I saw their curiosity and enthusiasm grow bit by bit.
When we talked about purpose, I mentioned that to reach new, and hopefully ambitious, destinations we needed to go to new places. It requires us to leave our comfort zone. I showed them one of the chocolate donuts that the company bakes. I asked them how is their donut related to their comfort zone. Do you have any idea?
The road back
For me, the comfort zone is the center of the donut. It is the air that we breathe daily. It is our typical day. We view life through it, and I literally placed my eye in the center of the donut looking at them.
Then I told them that where the flavor of life really is, where all the nutrients of creativity and innovation are, where we enjoy the fulfillment of a challenge is in the donut, the sweet dough surrounding the donut's hole.
After a few seconds, I bit it! And I made sure they all saw that it was delicious.
Return
A few weeks back, I met the company's CEO again. He mentioned that they had the 2019 kickoff meeting under a new format. One of the activities was bringing back highlights about the previous year, and many of them brought out that "they ate the donut."
I have to be completely honest. It takes guts to walk the talk! And here I am writing my first post for my blog after a fierce battle with my resistance because I believe the flavor of life, where we can impact the world is out of the comfort zone.
