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Sometimes, people we’ve never met can have a profound impact on our lives and learning. Let me tell you about one such person, Nancy Duncan. Nancy was my mentor coach during my CTI coaching certification program last year. I had interviewed nine potential mentor coaches. Then, a fellow student recommended her coach, Nancy.

“Well, one more interview can’t hurt,” I said, and so, I called her. After our session, I knew immediately that Nancy was the right fit. She loved coaching students in CTI certification, and it showed. She also had special certification rates that only one of the other coaches I spoke to offered.

I started my certification in the spring of 2018, and Nancy and I worked together into late fall. Mentor coaches guide you through your training and also coach you on what’s going on in your own life. Yes, coaches need coaches too!

By late summer in DC, I was truly itching to get out of town and embark on an adventure out west that had been a dream for a while. However, I had taken on a consulting assignment that had morphed into something far bigger than I signed up for. It would have been challenging to manage from the road, especially as I planned to explore the southwest US on this trip; you can drive through canyons and desert for miles on end without a rest point or wi-fi signal. And besides, I had quit my job a few years earlier so I could have this kind of freedom. The assignment was turning into another job, and I did not want to be tethered to a laptop.

With Nancy’s coaching holding me firmly accountable to my vision, I ended my consulting agreement. This was not easy to do as I like to complete what I have started, but, it gave me the bandwidth to focus on something that had become far more important to me–my coaching certification and clients. It was saying goodbye to the old world I had wanted to leave behind and step into the new one.

I continued my certification and coaching from the road. My last call with Nancy in early October was from Hilo. We had one more call scheduled after that. She felt that I was ready for my exam and did not need it. She also said she was going to take a break from coaching effective immediately. I have a hard time with parting, and so she agreed to schedule one more session in November.

When I reached LA in early November, I realized that she was right–I did not need another session to prepare for my exams. We had practiced enough and gone through drills. I had also sensed something was up when I last spoke to Nancy, that she was taking a break because something else had interrupted her life. And so, when I wrote to her to cancel the last session, I also said:

“I do want to thank you for your coaching—the work we did has really helped me become a better coach, and I am well prepared for my certification. Thank you for your commitment to my growth.”

She replied on November 3: “It has been my honor and delight to work with you. Let me know once you have your CPCC [certification].”

It was a succinct reply, that I knew was heartfelt and true to how she showed up as a coach.

After LA, I headed to Palm Springs to catch up with a friend. Then, after a few days in Joshua Tree National Park, I headed east to Phoenix where Nancy lived, and from where I would fly back to DC. I had always hoped we would have a chance to meet and even have our last session in person. But we had completed our relationship, and knowing she was taking a break, that was no longer on the agenda.

I sent her a message on December 23 from DC as soon as I got word that I had passed my exam: “It feels good to be certified! I just wanted to thank you for all your coaching and diligence in making sure I was ready for this. You really are committed to your clients, and I know while you’re taking a break from coaching, there are many more out there who would benefit from your dedication and commitment as I have. Thank you again, and wishing you good transformations in the year ahead…”

I never heard back.

Almost a year passed. A few days ago, on November 9, 2019, she popped into my head. I searched online and came across her obituary. She had passed away from cancer on November 12, 2018. Her last message to me had been written in her last week of life as she was dying, and still being able to say: “it has been my honor and delight to work with you.”

I can’t think of anything that could better epitomize the service and giving that true coaches are committed to. This last lesson, coming from her heart, could not have been captured in any session. It was not something she did, it was in her beingness.

One thing I’m relearning from this experience is the power of appreciating and acknowledging someone, not only for what they may have given, or how they helped, but for whom they’re being in the expression their gifts.

Acknowledgment comes from the heart, not the intellect. A “thank you” may precede it, but it is not thanks nor praise nor flattery. It doesn’t seek anything in return. Something gets created in an acknowledgment–it is generative.

Be generous in your acknowledgment of others. Don’t hold back—true acknowledgment is authentic, and it asks us to be vulnerable. Look the person in the eye as you acknowledge them. If you’re on the phone or writing an email to a person you have never met, don’t worry, it will be received and felt as powerfully. And don’t wait.

I’m very saddened by Nancy’s death. She was a joy to work with, comforting, concerned, optimistic, and ultimately, someone who held me accountable to move forward on my new path despite my fears. While she would not have read my last acknowledgment, I know she got it–both in our prior communications and the unseen intimacy we can choose to have with another person.

“It’s not working.” 

“I don’t know what I’m doing…” 

“I’ve messed it all up.” 

“I’m not happy with it!”

These are some of the things fellow students say in my art class. Its comprised of adults, many well past their 50s, several quite talented and serious painters. They don’t depend on art for their income, and many are retired.

And yet when the instructor comes around to help, these are the kind of comments I overhear a lot. I used to complain about my inadequate artistic skills in the same way. After training as a co-active coach, I learned to bring a lens of curiosity, rather than judgment, to the lives of my clients. For, example, when a client reports that they have not done what they said they would do between sessions, they’re not being a “bad” client. That judgment does not serve them. Instead, they present an opportunity to ask what became more important than doing the assignment or exploring the fear that held them back.

This approach is kinder and more effective at getting to the root of why we don’t do what we say we will. Looking at things with curiosity is a bit like turning over a rock in the garden to see the bugs and worms squirming underneath but not judging them because they live under a rock.

Curiosity is also a handy lens to bring to painting. As in coaching, it creates a space for discernment.

“If judging is a process of labeling, discernment is a process of learning,” says Amy Whitaker in her insightful book, Art Thinking.

So, now I catch myself out too. I stop myself from saying things like “I’m unhappy with my painting” to being curious instead about why it’s not working. 

Now, what constitutes “working” when it comes to art is a lifelong study, and entire tomes have been written on the subject. We won’t go into that, other than to say that the instructor and artist can together determine how well a painting works, without it having to be a judgment of the artist. 

As Whitaker also notes, art students are asked to stand back from their work to see what is going on. You cannot discern with your face up in the canvas and a brush in your hand. Sometimes I will take my painting to the hallway and stand 20 feet away from it. How does it look from this distance? Next, I will turn the canvas upside down to figure out how form holds in space. And when you look at a painting in the mirror, a technique handed down from da Vinci himself, it miraculously becomes a different beast altogether. The parts of the painting that need attention almost seem to pop out while those that work well seem to take on even more resonance. 

All these tactics engender a shift in perspective through distance or an unexpected reversal. It challenges any preconceived mental images we have in our minds of what the completed painting “should” look like, and instead focus on what’s actually here. 

These tactics help to separate our creation from ourselves. Once we stop looking to some paint that we slapped on a canvas as a measure of our inherent worth as creative human beings, we are liberated to discern what needs improving. It is working on this edge of our present ability, of struggling, reaching and falling short, that takes us into the sweet spot of “deliberate practice” extolled by Daniel Coyle in his revelatory book, The Talent Code. 

The vase in this painting epitomized this struggle because I just couldn’t get it to work with the rest of the painting, neither the shape nor capturing its curvature. It also did not sit and hold its place as revealed by da Vinci’s mirror technique. I returned to it at each session never quite satisfied, trying not to blame the vase for being of a somewhat odd shape and color to begin with, nor myself for not being able to render it as I saw it. In the third and last session, it finally came together.

Making mistakes is inherent in this process. If anything, the painting usually gets worse before it gets better. I used to be much more attached to the outcome when I first started oil painting. Under the cryptic Zen-like guidance of one of my instructors, I learned to let go. 

Invariably, in class, at some point, someone will knock a painting off an easel by accident, and everyone will gasp with horror. I’ve learned to laugh when this happens to my painting and joke that the now smeared canvas looks better.

Gradually, as I became more detached from the imagined masterwork I would create, I found the process to be the primary source of enrichment. 

This metaphor of creating a painting is one that we can apply to our own lives. When we navigate our lives with discernment (via curiosity) rather than judgment, we allow a space for deliberate practice to begin.

We have deemed ourselves as inherently worthy and can now focus on the challenges of getting better at our craft, whether it is raising children, building a business, or making a quilt. 

We will know that it is at the edge of our ability where we need to stretch—and struggle—a bit. If we do this consistently, we will grow and astonish ourselves and others. We are essentially nurturing the crucial skill-building myelin sheaths of new neural pathways rather than merely traversing the old worn ones that lead to judgment and dead ends. 

All of my fellow artists are committed to creating better art. Many are painting several times a week, and we’re often in a collective flow state in which the three-hour session evaporates in what seems like minutes. But when we switch into judgment, we’re headed down a slippery slope where our self-worth becomes entangled with the work we are creating.

At any stage in the process of art and life, we can pause and take a step back. We can disentangle, turn things upside down and take a good hard look in the mirror. We can drop judgment in favor of curiosity. We can be kinder. Only then, can we better discern where we need to go or what to do next.

A lighthouse question can be the beacon that guides us through unknown territory especially when we are creating something new in our lives. 

Art and business interlocutor, Amy Whitaker introduced the lighthouse question in her groundbreaking book, Art Thinking. A lighthouse question comes into play when what we want can’t easily be reduced to SMART targets or goals. That ‘something’ may be too daring, abstract or simply has never been done before. SMART targets have their place, but as Whitaker writes, they also reflect a belief system that the future responds to specific, knowable plans.” 

More usefully, Whitaker likens the lighthouse question to the major dramatic question underlying a screenplay. There is the plot line (what will happen, and who will do or say what when) but underneath the plot flows the “current” of a more expansive and meaningful question.

For example, the major dramatic questions underlying the movie Green Book might be: can two men from different classes and ethnicities be friends in a segregated America of the 1960s and can a black man be seen and respected as an equal human being in white America? (The second question is one we are, woefully, still struggling with.) In a way, it’s like asking, what’s really the big possibility at stake here?

 As a co-active coach, I am also asking clients: what’s really at stake here? I help clients claim a vision for their life that is more authentic, meaningful and fulfilling—to them. Many come to me with their plot lines all worked out such as “I just need help getting a job that pays a little bit more and where I won’t have to work late.” And then they’re off to the races, applying to every job posted online that they are equipped for, whether it’s a good fit or not. They don’t take time to stand back to ask the more profound lighthouse questions beneath, such as:  

-Earning more money is one factor, but what else is essential to have? 

-What opportunities have I not looked at because I believe they won’t pay enough? 

-What kind of work would really engage me and get me up in the morning?  

These are the questions that as a coach I am more interested in shining a light on because they permit clients to explore bigger-hearted and more generous possibilities of whom we can be. 

Most people live a ‘second-hand’ life, one handed to them, based on what parents, social network, culture, or society tell them they should be and do. And yet, many of us experience moments when our inner voice comes through loud and clear and when we are inspired from the heart. But in the cold light of day we are often too scared to move towards what we want, or just don’t know how. This is where a lighthouse question can help. 

As an example, Whitaker gives a gripping account of Roger Bannister who was the first man to break the four-minute mile, something that apparently it was believed could not be done without the risk of death. This was not something that could be set up as SMART goals, as there was no precedent for it. It required imagination. While the plotline of this exciting story might focus on teamwork and tactics that Bannister used to get around the track faster, the major dramatic question she writes was “can a man run that fast?” Or even bolder than that: “is the frontier of human capability bigger than we know?” 

People who are willing to make a break from the trajectory of their predictable past and create something new in their lives are the ones who have most to gain by articulating their lighthouse question. Whitaker notes, “you move forward not by winning a game but by creating the game itself. You’re not going from a known A to a known B, you’re inventing B….”

Lighthouse questions illuminate a way forward towards B; but they do not provide binary answers, and they are certainly not a step-by-step road map. They are a beacon that can elicit new ways being, stir dormant qualities within you, deepen your sense of your purpose or vision, and light your way forward. 

Let me use an example from my own life. In a blog post a few years back I wrote:

A month after I turned 50, I quit my job. I said goodbye to a decent salary…with a future untold… I was almost nine years into my monogamous relationship with my job, and I’d been in the game long enough to know that I run on something akin to a seven to nine-year itch in my professional life. And each time the push to renew, to find new shores, is different. I decided it was time to go against the grain, take a break — a sabbatical if you will — stretch my toes out and enjoy life a little more. It was time to know what I wanted the rest of my working years to feel like. What was to be the texture of my remaining time? What was, to paraphrase Oliver, to be my “place in the family of things”?

Suffice it to say this was not an easy decision. What if my money runs out? What will I actually do with my life? Friends asked: won’t you have a hard time getting another job after 50, and what about retirement? These are all valid questions to ask, as there is a part of us that wants to make sure we don’t end up under a bridge. But as I look back on that period, I realize that the major dramatic questions for this story for were: 

1. Can someone in their 50s reinvent themselves to do something totally different, more fulfilling and fun? (the texture of my remaining time)

2. What does it mean to find your place “in the family of things”?

These are the perennial question that many people later stage of life are willing to explore. Now, my life is not a Netflix miniseries (at least not yet) and I’m curious to see how this story will unfold. After giving it further thought, and going deeper, I’ve realized that my lighthouse questions are these:

1. Can I create a life of belonging, entirely on my terms, that brings me fulfillment and joy? 

2. If I trust myself, will I know how to live? (This takes a favorite quote from Goethe and turns it into question.)

These are not time-bound questions. I also get to invent point B, which is what fulfillment and joy look like—for me. These are the lighthouse questions I have been living into for the past three years. I only ‘saw’ these when I stood back a bit and applied Whitaker’s frame to my recent life journey. In time, the question may shift or change as I test new propositions, arriving each time at a deeper knowing. This approach is infinitely scalable over any period of our lives. 

I like lighthouse questions. They elevate us above the fray of life. They don’t deliver us to the doorway of dull and mundane answers. They rise above the commerce of reason into the realm of creativity, of ‘why not?’ They enable us to test new paths where there have been none before. Perhaps, most ennobling as Whitaker writes, the “lighthouse question is a touchstone of how your authenticity manifests in the world.” 

As I reviewed my ABCDs of Better Communication, I realized that “D,” which stands for differentiation, had quietly made its way over from marketing and infiltrated communications. What gives?

I worked with a branding expert some years ago who extolled the virtues of branding in providing strategic clarity to organizations. The light bulb went off; I saw how I could tear some sheets from the branding playbook to bring clarity to my communications and remain on purpose. So, ever since, I’ve been operating from the fertile ground where branding and communications mingle.

Differentiation is a cornerstone of branding. It relies on the primitive parts of our brains. Way back when large hairy creatures roamed the earth, our ancestors had to be able to determine whether something or someone was friend or foe. And we had to do this really fast in an “eat or be eaten” world. So, apparently, we became highly attuned to differentiating one thing from one another. Makes sense to me.

With many of the life and death threats faced by our ancestors assuaged by electricity, polyester and the internet, we can now use this very evolutionary wiring to become better communicators.

“What makes you different from the others in your field? What are you or your organization/company doing that no one else is?, ” I wrote in my post. “Hone in on this. If you don’t differentiate yourself from the competition, you won’t get noticed.”

So let’s hone. Of course, we’re not over in the marketing departments, so we’re spared having to write copy to sell widgets on the TV shopping networks. But as Daniel Pink says in his book “To Sell is Human,” we are all in one way or another, in the business of selling things. So let’s accept this gracefully and get to it.

So how do we differentiate ourselves from the competition without a sales pitch? Here’s one approach worth its brevity and boldness:

Don’t use buzzwords. 

It’s that simple. Aren’t all great expressions boilable down to just three words? “He left me.” “I love you,” “You did what?” Wait, is boilable even a word? In the service of wit, I solemnly declare that it is.

One working definition of buzzwords that I like from marketingterms.com is: “a trendy word or phrase that is used more to impress than explain.”

Wait, it gets even better. They write:  “A buzzword spends only a fraction of its life being used; the rest of the time it is being abused. The result is a phenomenon known as buzzword backlash, whereby the tide turns against a buzzword and it starts to fade from usage.”

Let’s take an example. I made this one up so don’t go searching for it online: “Our brain surgeons are uniquely qualified to perform neurosurgery through innovative protocols conducted at state-of-the art facilities.” 

Have you spotted the buzzwords? How many of you are impressed? Not even a little bit? Point made.

First, everyone or every organization is unique in their own, um, unique way, so if you are uniquely qualified then tell us how so or why. Maybe all your brain surgeons are “ranked in the top 10% by the “American Society of Brain Surgeons.” Or “they all know the Sesame Street characters and jingles by heart.” Whatever your differentiating factor, if it’s credible and meaningful to your audience then use it; don’t mask it with a buzzword. The truth is always much more engaging than your buzzword version of it.

The same goes for words like “state-of-the-art” or “innovative.” You may have to dig a bit to find the “hidden justification” behind these terms. In the above example, you could explain what makes your facilities “state-of-the art.” For example, maybe you’re using one of the new robotic surgical machines. Did you say, robots? Now, ears are perking up. If you’re worried that your audience might be suspicious of robots that operate on their brain, then you have a chance to discuss this new technology and how it benefits them. Either way, you now have a conversation starter for social media. Communications is now all about conversations, not throwing jargon or buzzwords at your audience. So have one.

I once wrote about a “state of the art” machine that could analyze seed samples for their mineral content (or something to that effect) without requiring a team of technicians in white lab coats hovering about and holding chromatograms up to the light. There were many technical differentiating factors I could have droned on about, but these would be of little interest to the non-scientific audience we were trying to reach.

Instead, I wrote about how this new technology could get us from point A to B, painting a picture of why B was so worthwhile a target. I also noted that the machine took up no more space than a “desktop photocopier.” This visual conveyed the ease with which it could be shipped and nicely deployed in the corner of a lab to work its magic wherever it was needed. It also captured the wow factor of getting all that technology into a small package in a way everyone could relate to without going into the specs that only excite scientists. I took something abstract and made it concrete.

In another instance, I broke down “innovation” by talking about how another new technology reduced the time it took to get from point A to B “from several weeks to a matter of days, ” and again, why it mattered.

When you use this approach, you’re treating your audience as intelligent beings, not as cave people of eons ago. You are showing that you care enough about their time and attention to explain things in ways that make sense to them. What makes these two last two examples resonate? One technology saves space, and the other saves time–everyone from a scientist to a homemaker can relate to that.

Review your work and look to see if buzzwords have taken root. Then, see how you could have avoided those terms and engaged your audience by unmasking the truth behind the buzzwords. As you become more vigilant, you’ll be able to spot a buzzword a mile away. You will see how to meaningfully differentiate your company or organization and its work from most of your competitors. Your overall communications and (and marketing) will begin to hit home. Both you and your audience will come out ahead. When you connect with your audience, you can have a conversation. It’s a win-win. Mea culpa.

One caveat: not all buzzwords have reached the stage of being abused and there may be times they work as shortcuts, often in daily transactional conversations, eg. “She’s out of pocket.” So this is not a blanket ruling against them. However, in nine out of ten instances they are being abused and statistics tell us where we likely fall. So when you’re communicating professionally, I suggest avoiding them as much as possible.

On a side note, in my last job, I banned the use of the word “innovation.” I scrutinized everything that came across my desk with an eagle eye to expunge this offensive word. I had fun coming up with new creative ways to get the point across. Now, if that’s not being innovative, then I don’t know what is.

Let the buzzword backlash begin!