To be sure, the “troubles” in Northern Ireland since the Easter Rebellion in 1914 represent one of the most confounding conflicts of our times.

I have been writing that leadership arises in taking a stand that a difference can be made in situations that look difficult or impossible, and until recently, few have risen to the occasion.

But this past month, Ian Paisley, head of the Democratic Unionist Party and Protestant groups, and Gerry Adams, head of Sin Fein and Catholic groups, began face-to-face negotiations that led to a historic breakthrough.

The two announced a breakthrough deal Monday to forge a power-sharing administration by the end of May, a long-elusive goal of peacemaking, since the Good Friday Meetings.

The two foes, who previously negotiated only via third parties, sat across from each other at a table in the main dining room in Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast, but reportedly did not shake hands.

The historic icebreaker came on the day that Tony Blair set an “unbreakable” deadline for a Catholic-Protestant administration to be formed. "We're very hopeful that progress can be made," the Sinn Fein Chairwoman Mary Lou McDonald said as the talks began between Paisley (80) and Adams (58)—long sworn, bitter enemies.

If there is any leadership lesson that can be learned from this story, it is that even those who are sworn enemies want to leave a legacy and can thus find it within themselves to subordinate their egos to a higher cause.

Perhaps another lesson is that all the posturing and defensiveness that goes on in the absence of communication accomplishes little, while if we sit down and talk to someone we might rather avoid, we often accomplish a lot.

Also sitting down face-to-face - however distasteful the idea may be -  is a much better way to resolve conflict than going through a third party.

After a busy day on my This Old House Project, I took off at 6:30 pm for the Big Apple. I had appointments schedule the next day with Morgan Stanley and ABC (Disney).

I was to meet with the Global Talent Development Chiefs of each of these companies. Chances are, if you are an executive coach and you call the CEO of big company looking for business, you will be shifted to this department in short order.

As I got off the 32nd floor in the burled wood elevator in one of these august companies, a secretary escorted me through some glass doors to meet the Talent Managers. As I stepped into the office, I saw a sign on the door that said, “Training Department.”

In a lot of companies, the “Talent Development Manager” is just a new handle for what used to be called the Training Manager—typically one of the least empowered people in the company.

We have discovered that in most companies, the Talent Manager’s role is pestilence avoidance—another words, to keep out the hordes of consultants from cold calling senior management 24/7.

Like the Training Manager of yore, their main job is to play gatekeeper. Send us your resume. Don’t call us. We’ll call you. This can all be linked back to the fact that most business executives see leadership development as a separate activity to be delegated to others.

Now as most Talent Managers are often ex-psychologists who have never had to produce business results, coaching (like training) of executives is seen as providing leadership lobotomies (remediation of problem behavior), rather than leadership excellence and bottom-line results.

When I visited Morgan Stanley, I was told by the Leadership Development folks that they are taking a very different approach. First of all, every key business unit has a CEO, and the CEO has a second job that they are accountable for that is called “talent development.”

For example, one of Morgan Stanley’s business unit leaders is also the Talent Development Executive who used to be in charge of Morgan Stanley Asia. He heads up a burgeoning new area at the Investment Bank today.

The BU Leader/Talent Development Manager works in close partnership with Talent Development colleagues (subject matter experts in HR). Yes, part of their job still includes vetting coaches.

I was told that because Morgan Stanley investment bankers have the opportunity to make millions of dollars a year depending on how many deals they do, talent development is closely linked to getting business results, not just a remedial activity.

Further, as time is money, the bank sends very few people off to executive development programs at Harvard Business School to be entertained by professors or to the Center for Creative Leadership for a psychological intensive.

I perked up when they said this, because I have been told repeatedly that the best part of a week of executive education at Harvard were the professors jokes and the food. I have also secretly held CCL in thinly disguised contempt—yes, execs get some useful 360 feedback on their leadership behavior but…where’s the beef? ROI!

I told the bankers that Masterful Coaching takes a contrarian approach and we’re totally aligned with where they were coming from. We believe that leaders need to be developing other leaders, coaching takes place in the domain of accomplishment not therapy, and success is measured by ROI vs. behavior modification.

After the meeting with Morgan Stanley, I visited ABC (Disney Entertainment) where the Talent Managers were clearly advocating linking leadership development to business goals.

While they may not yet have the same level of executive sponsorship as Morgan Stanley, the signs were all there that a paradigm shift was in the wind. Coaching is often seen as helping executives win in the ratings oriented business of TV vs. just helping them conform to the corporate leadership competency list.

Being offered a coach is seen at Disney as “a good thing” rather than a bad thing (such as a last gasp effort before being show the door). Finally there are many executives who clamor for coaches who can be a thinking partner and trusted confidant. The job of Talent Management is to make sure that the coaching delivers ROI.

Perhaps this is a sign of a shift in the wind through the corporate world. Inshallah. If God wills it.

About two years ago, I received a phone call from Rabbi Stuart Slammer, who having been inspired by reading Masterful Coaching, asked me to coach him. It turned out that Rabbi Slammer lived and worked less than a mile from my office in Brookline, Ma. I agreed to take him on and we enjoyed many conversations—something which caused Stuart to compliment me by saying I was prone to “knessed,” (random acts of kindness).

Stuart turned out to be a fascinating and intriguing individual to work with—if he were not a rabbi in the tradition of the great Rabbi Soloveitchik, he might easily be mistaken for a Fortune 500 business executive. His conversations would run from the Bal Shem Tov words of wisdom to Jack Welch’s leadership style, from the Talmud to Blue Ocean Strategy, from the work of Rabbi Soloveitchik (who ordained over 2000 rabbis) to The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.

Stuart was certainly ambitious; he wanted to become “Head of School” (grades 1 to 12) at the Bal Shem Tov School  where he worked as an elementary school principal. Having said that, his ambition often led him into a state of perpetual angst and anxiety, as well as worrisome behavior. It wasn’t long after I began coaching Rabbi Slammer that I began to feel as if I was smack dab in the middle of a Woody Allen movie.

Stuart’s main hurdle to vault over was something I call the “Kvetch Factor.” What’s the Kvetch Factor? Imagine Woody Allen going on in his sing-song voice about how his mother’s high standards (nothing’s good enough) traumatized his sense of self-esteem, or how his psychologist emasculated him by questioning the size of his penis, or the how the studio manager cut his 30 page script to 3 pages, and so on. Oy vey!

Admittedly, Stuart’s continual kvetching was less Freudian than neo-Dostoyevskian or Rodney Dangerfield in nature. “I can’t believe what the Board just did to disempower me,” “The Head of School didn’t return my phone call,” “I gave the assistant principle a bad Performance Review and now she is out to get me.” “I shouldn’t have sent that email to the board, almost demanding a promotion. Now what should I do?”

The visible angst that would appear on Stuart’s face as he fretted over these concerns caused me to feel compassion for him. Having said that, I found his continual kvetching very annoying to say the least. Stuart would begin our coaching sessions by talking about his goals and priorities than default to kvetching about the state of his life in the Bal Shev Tov School World.

For example, one day he came to me visibly upset about the Board refusing to shorten summer vacation due to snow days. I would interrupt and say, “Stuart, I love you and you’ve got great potential as a leader, but digging in your heals about something that is bound to be unpopular isn’t going to do you a damn bit a good, and by tomorrow you will probably act out in ways that get you in trouble. You have got to learn to manage yourself better.”

We tried everything to get him to “master his mind,” starting with me interrupting him every time he started to kvetch. “Stuart, stop talking about what’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with them, and what’s wrong with the school. Start talking about what positive action you can take.” Yet as I couldn’t be there all the time with Stuart, I encouraged him to practice self awareness. I asked him to wear a rubber band on his wrist and to snap it hard every time he found himself kvetching.

It took at least a year of coaching conversations about his goals and aspirations and kvetching patterns before we made any progress. The conversations started to be 80% goal and execution oriented and 20% kvetching, rather than the other way around. Then in perfect synchronicity with the growth Stuart was making inside himself, opportunities for growth started to show up in the world around him.

He was contacted by a head hunter who opened some doors for him. He was offered positions to be Head of School in Los Angeles and Montreal, and finally in another big school in New York with 1100 students. He took that job and today a much happier Stuart and his family are planning to move to the Big Apple and beyond. I want to wish Stuart all the luck—“muzzle” (Yiddish expression) in the world. It has been great knowing you.

My personal This Ole House Project in Waltham, Ma is taking place just a few miles from Brandeis University where Professor Abraham Maslow, noted psychologist, developed his psychology of self actualization.

It is interesting to point out then that I have led or coached many Baby Boomers whose aspirations and motivations were very high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; few who were primarily interested in putting bread on the table.

I learned over the years leadership methods for inspiring, empowering, and motivating Boomers to take on an Impossible Future and make a difference by appealing to their higher needs. “This job will allow you to fulfill your leadership potential,” I would tell them. “You have an opportunity here to make a difference.” I didn’t have to talk to them much about the size of their paychecks, as many of the people I worked with over the years were multi millionaires.

Having said that, when I stepped from leading (coaching) executives of Global 1000 corporations to managing contract workers in my World is Flat Project, I had to find a whole new way of interacting with people. I found that people didn’t care much about inspiring visions and values, and the conversations certainly were not about job satisfaction.

The conversations I engaged in with my Chinese, Vietnamese, Peruvian, and Dominican workers were primarily on the first rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—safety and security—and focused almost 100% around money. So rather than show up as a transformational leader talking about vision and values, I would revert to plain old transactional leadership.

Here was one typical riff: “Come work for me today and do a good job and I will pay you $100, give you a free lunch and bring you back to work for me tomorrow, and maybe the day after. If you don’t do a good job, I will fire you by noon time, let you buy your own lunch and never bring you back again.” One potential worker's reply, "I will do the best job that I can, and if you do not like it, f... you and I will find another job." And with that, I knew we had a deal.

I knew a lot about emotional leadership, but this job taught me about dollars and sense management.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am renovating a house in Waltham, Ma on 7 acres of land that used to be owned by Swiss figure skaters, Frick and Frack, who were renowned for being able to contort their legs and arms on ice into the most bizarre positions. I am told by a local contractor that they built an ice skating rink on a part of the property that is now grown over with trees.

When I first started the project, a local plumber told me that the house was a “tear down” and it would cost me at least $60,000 just for the plumbing. That to me was a battle cry. I was determined from that moment on to prove that this arrogant, over priced, fat-ass plumber was all wet.

I recalled Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” which said that workers from any part of the world can compete with Americans for a fraction of the price without barrier to entry. If the concept of “outsourcing” works for big corporations, why not for small business and homeowners?

Ever since that regrettable meeting with the plumber, I have been working with a global, “World is Flat” assembly of contract workers who I found through Chinese newspapers, Craigslist.com, and the Home Depot Parking lot. We finished the inside restoration of the house and are now engaged in restoring the outside. The total cost of the job I guess will be about $80,000 (plumbing no more than $1000).

This included installing 45 new windows, fixing water damaged ceilings, painting the entire house, replacing all the outside window trim, installing a new kitchen with gorgeous marble counter tops, sanding the hardwood floors, building a new bathroom, restoration of a decrepit sun porch, construction of huge balcony on the outside, and a 1001 other items.

My motley crew of Chinese, Brazilians, Vietnamese, Columbians, Peruvians, and so on, have put that fat, overpriced plumber with a Boston accent to shame. Here is a specific example about that guy that pissed me off. When we first started working on the house, I needed to get running water working in at least one of the bathrooms. The plumber, who I will call Wally, came over and told me that the main source of the problem was a broken pipe in the basement.

He said he would fix the pipe for a fixed price of $250 dollars. Wally fixed it and left, but the water still didn’t run in the sink and the toilet. When I told him that, he responded that it was a fixed price contract and the normal price for fixing a pipe. Getting running water in there was going to require fixing the main valve for a cost of $1500 or more.

I called one of my Chinese friends who looked in the Chinese newspaper and called a construction company. About four guys showed up about 90 minutes later, fixed the main valve, got the kitchen sink going and not only restored water to the downstairs bathroom, but to the upstairs as well by replacing a pipe or two. Total cost: $150.

The interesting thing about my world is flat workers is that they are all generalists, not licensed specialists. The average guy can do carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting or whatever. While I had one problem with one group (a new bathroom floor that wasn’t level and had to be redone), I would chose my motley crew over that professional plumber and his cronies any day.

Moral of the story: If you are a big corporation, small business, home owner, and you have a dream that requires buying products and services that would be unaffordable at US (European) prices, consider going “The World is Flat” route. The chances are there is someone out there who can help you realize your dream by offering you quality products and services at a price you can afford.

Bush Ignored the Law of Unintended Consequences

I can remember sitting at a Renaissance Conference almost five years ago before the war in Iraq began, listening to army generals with the wisdom of Solomon offer deep caution about going into Iraq. “Beware of the law of unintended consequences,” they cautioned. “Going to war will create a breeding ground for terrorists with a chip on their shoulders, as well as kindle secular disputes.”

It seemed to me so obvious that declaring a war against Iraq would result in more terrorism in the world—and it has, together with tremendous loss of life of both USA military personal and Iraqis people. On the day I wrote this the headlines I read: 100’s killed in Iraq by blasts, 104 US forces killed in April.

The Bush administration has created a phenomenal disaster. In the months to come, the President will no doubt receive all kind of advice about how to resolve the situation: regional diplomatic conferences, power sharing deals, partitioning of the country, plans to increase or diminish the number of USA troops there.

While experts may brilliantly argue each of the above alternatives, they seem to be blind to one key factor—the expectation of a rational, cooperative reaction from the Iraqis. According to one CIA official, the level of violence has become satanic.

As the violence increases, the center cannot hold (whether you look at the center as the USA military or the Iraqi government) and the pressures on the Iraqi people are mounting. For example, it is impossible to get your teeth fixed in Baghdad as all of the dentists have left. On the eve of the second USA invasion, who would have thought this would have been one of the unintended consequences.

The average Joe’s quest for survival is causing normal people to act like extremists and actually strengthening warring tribes. If you are a resident in Baghdad, the most logical response is to seek protection from one of the militias, Al Qaeda if you are Sunni, the Mahdi if you are a Shiite. No matter how many troops we send it, it will be years before we see any real progress.

Like the war in Iraq or not, the purpose of which was to end terrorism appears to be lost. What good is a nuclear submarine, tank, or platoon of soldiers against a terrorist ready to blow himself up in a marketplace because he sees this as a way to a better afterlife or hates the occupation of his country.

The Bush administration needs to face reality and declare that the war in Iraq cannot be won (and certainly not the peace) by military means. Instead of thinking about how to win, the President and his team need to brainstorm how to creatively withdraw, while still holding the line against Islamic extremism. For example: bring the troops home, but maintain Special Forces in Iraq with a quick strike capability, poised to attack against Al Qaeda operations on a regular basis.

I hopped a 6 AM plane to Atlanta yesterday to meet with Bill Scott, VP at Georgia Pacific in charge of Operational Excellence. I took Marta (not a person but a state of the art metro train system) that landed me at Peach Tree Center and the huge granite GP building.

The long and the short of it is that I don’t much like getting on airplanes and staying in business hotels and renting cars…and Marta kind of made my day go a lot better.

The meeting with Bill went, well, peachy. He is on a lateral leadership assignment designed to build a world-class supply chain for GP that will save the company a substantial amount on costs on an annual basis.

The challenge has been to find solutions that are based upon building on the strengths of business profit centers, while at the same time, benefiting the corporation with cost savings associated with center-led, shared services…in this case, logistics services.

Bill has spent the last 6 months or so creating the business case to get his ideas accepted. My coaching involved now getting Bill to shift from a supply-chain wizard to the opposite foot and become a master politician who can drive his ideas through.

I coached Bill on upcoming meetings with the Chairman and the EVP during a stopover at his house, which looks like a petite French chateaux turned into a work of art by his wife Carol, a superb decorator.

“She makes every point a focal point,” Bill said as he pointed out the buffalo head he hunted which sits over the fireplace only a few feet a way from a Chinese-made, black, grand piano.

We sat in Bill’s backyard patio smoking Cuban cigars, drinking a fine triple-malt scotch, and listening to classical music, while continuing the dialogue started back at the office. A good cigar seems to make the conversation flow in an easy, relaxed manner and the scotch makes the conversation positively pleasurable.

“All your life you have been a performer, Bill, doing the boss’ bidding and you have come a long way. Now it’s time to become a master politician.” Bill’s fat little dog, a sausage-like beast not more than 8 to10 inches high howled when I said that.

The hours passed and soon I was back on Marta on the way to catch my 6 PM flight to the airport. Just another long day in the life of a masterful coach.

It’s been a while since I have written in this blog. The reason, I have taken a brief leave of absence from my normal preoccupation of making my living with my mouth—public speaking and coaching.

Instead, I have been preoccupied with the restoration of a 100-year-old house I own situated on 7 acres in Waltham, MA, just outside of Boston. In my next career, I intend to be a gentleman farmer.

Well, if truth be told, I am normally a rather lazy person, but when I put my mind to something, like this project, I become what the late great Peter Drucker called a “monomaniac with a mission.”

I told Mr. Guo (the Chinese contractor I hired to do the job who speaks nary a word of English) that I was operating on what Jacqueline Kennedy called the chinziest budget for the project and would act as the procurer.

I made over 100 trips to Home Depot and Loews to buy tile, toilets, weather-stripping, paint, and everything else imaginable. As a Chinese restaurateur once told me in broken English, “You save money, but you lose your time,” In this case, no truer words have ever been spoken.

Mr. Guo (low bidder) took on the job with a can-do-spirit, but was quickly drained of all enthusiasm when one day he pulled up a porch board to discover four rotten timbers below it and a soggy, moldy crumbling basement foundation below that. “Too much working. Everyday, Too Much Working!”

He complained to my stalwart project manager, Vivian Song, a double PhD in material science, “This house is a swamp.”

I was soon to discover that dealing with the material properties of the house—its bare stucco walls, broken windows, and moldy kitchen—would be the smallest part of this undertaking, and dealing with “Guo,” as all called him, would be the biggest part.

Guo, who appeared to be charming and professional and straightforward at the beginning, proven to be as crafty, canny, and conniving as a minister’s uncle in a Mandarin court.

Getting the job done at the agreed price required on our parts a combination of diplomatic nicety, along with the kinds of threats of annihilation that only someone like Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde could bring to dealing with Guo’s complaints and all too numerous absences.

We went from breaking bread (Chinese doughnuts at the local Beijing Star restaurant) one day to threatening to bring him before the Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court the next to talking about what a great friendship was developing the day after.

A typical scenario: toward the end of the project when we were pushing to meet an agreed upon deadline, I created a list of 28 items that needed to be completed: put the door knob on the back door, touch up the kitchen paint, straighten drain pull handle on the sink, and so on.

Guo, who seemed to increasingly defer doing any additional work, but who wanted to keep his personal relationship with me, had his girlfriend call me on a Monday morning three days after a small snowstorm. “Guo wanted me to tell you that because he’s your friend, he will do the jobs he has agreed.”

“Yet because of the snowstorm, the driveway might be difficult for safety reasons to get up, so the earliest he will be able to see you is Wednesday or Thursday, safety being his consideration.”

I hit the ceiling, “Tell Guo I spent $100 plowing the gravel, albeit hilly driveway yesterday and furthermore, if safety is a concern, tell him that it only takes one minute to walk up the gravel driveway. Further, the heaviest tool he and his 30-something workers will have to carry is a paintbrush.”

To be continued…

It took me a year to write Masterful Coaching in 1995. The intention was to be the Future of Coaching—Impossible Futures not mere behavior modification (perish the thought. I hate that term.)

At the time I wrote the book, Peter Senge had come out with the Fifth Discipline, a very successful book. In my mind, coaching would eventually surpass the idea of the learning organization, vehicle for building inspired, high -performing organizations, but I couldn’t get anyone else to share in that vision.

The plan in 1995 was to make some noise and maybe drum up some business. However for at least another year, well into 1996, I sat in my office alone. The phone didn’t ring even once. We were so poor at one point we had to sell the computer I wrote the book on to pay the rent.

Still I stuck to my vision, even though well-intended friends told me I should give up and get a job, words that pierced my heart. Then one day in 1996, I got a call from Dorothy Hutt of Bell Canada telling me it was a “brilliant book” and inviting me to Ottawa for a special engagement. This was the ice breaker.

So much has changed since them. The Masterful Coaching business began to catch on landing some Global 1000 type companies in my lap. This gave me the opportunity to gain tons of executive coaching experience and develop the Masterful Coaching methodology.

Today coaching seems to have become an idea whose time has come, with almost every company having an executive whose job it is to make sure their “people strategy” matches their “business strategy,” with coaching being one of the levers they pull most often.

At Masterful Coaching the phone is now ringing a lot more often, not just from executives at companies like Textron, Airbus, Nestle, Marriott, ABB, and Loews, but from people in various parts of the world interested in doing joint ventures.

One JV call (which I previously wrote about) came from Jae Chang Jeong, CEO of PSI Consulting (and M Coaching) in Korea. This JV is aimed primarily at big companies like Samsung.

Another call came from with Frank Marinko, a very successful executive and small business coach from Australia. We are working on a program called “Winning at Business” for small businesses.

Next I got a call from Muli Glezer, an Israeli entrepreneur and one of the best networkers I have ever met. Muli introduced me to Noga Kainan, President of the CFO Forum in Israel, whose call is to make Israel one of the fastest growing economies in the world (and who is also interested in a JV).

Still another came from Luis Alberto Zuleta from Columbia, South America, who has started several very successful consulting companies aimed at large corporations there. Luis is like a burst of positive energy.

This month Muli will be visiting me in Boston hopefully to further develop our relationship and perhaps put some ink on the pink (sign a deal) and I will be hosting Luis in February.

I am seeing that there are endless possibilities of combining the Masterful Coaching methodology with the talents, expertise,  and intentions of passionate individuals/ groups world-wide.

“For those who say they stand slavery, I suggest that they try it themselves.” Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham Lincoln entitled “Team of Rivals” is in my opinion a masterpiece and a wonderful companion to anyone who is in the position of coaching leaders. It portrays Lincoln as ambitious and humble, a powerful leader and vulnerable, a master politician and a master of human nature.

The book shows how Lincoln, once elected, turned around and appointed his brilliant presidential rivals Seward, Stanton, Bates, and Chase to his cabinet where they each distinguished themselves brilliantly.

The thing that impressed me most about the book was Lincoln’s ability to take a stand on issues like the Emancipation Proclamation, replacing General McClellan, and pardoning a deserter, but did so in a way that did not make others around him feel belittled or humiliated, even those who tried to publicly destroy him.

Once when a northern politician had offended him by saying he was a dictator and undermining the war effort, Lincoln was very disturbed and spent a good part of the night writing a letter. The next morning he put it in a locked file, “Letter to a Copperhead, unsigned and unsent, A. Lincoln.”

Another favorite story is about the time President Lincoln in the dark days of the Civil War got word through his personal assistant, John Hay that Salmon T. Chase, a former Presidential rival and now his Secretary of the Treasury, was actively plotting to beat him in the next Presidential election. Chase not only spent a lot of time lobbying prominent politicians to back him, he actively stirred up dissent regarding the President’s management of both his cabinet and the war.

Yet despite Lincoln’ s secretary’s admonishment to remove Chase from the Cabinet or at least to chastise him, Lincoln merely chuckled and said, “If Chase’s motivation is to become President, I will not strip that away from him as he is doing a superlative job and great service to the nation in raising money through war bonds to support the Union Army.”

I can almost guarantee that once you read this book when it comes time to take a stand, you will never again speak a harsh word or send the offending party a nasty letter. In so doing, you will transform all your rivals into friends and allies.