Coaching Practice Archives - Decision Coaching – Ursina Teuscher, PhD

Blog Archives

Does Positive Thinking Help You Reach Your Goals?

Can positive thinking help you reach your goals? Picture from: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/539763 (Attribution not required)

Can “positive thinking” really help you change your life for the better and reach your goals? Many motivational speakers and writers seem to believe so, but empirical studies reveal a more complicated picture.

If you want to reach your goals, positive thinking seems to come with some pitfalls.

In particular, in her research spanning decades, Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues have discovered a powerful link between positive thinking and poor performance [e.g., 1 – 5]. Oettingen’s book “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation” [6], and her website detail many of these findings. For example, in one study [2] they asked college students who had a crush on someone to engage in future fantasies about them and a person of their romantic interest.

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Event Series: Procrastination and ADHD Follow-Through

Free webinar series with Vicki Lind (MS) and Ursina Teuscher (PhD) on Procrastination and ADHD.

Do you procrastinate? Do you have ADHD? Stalled on a project?

Start 2023 with a clear plan and support by joining my colleague Vicki Lind and me in a webinar series and support hub. Do you struggle with procrastination or ADHD, or know someone who does? Learn more about procrastination and how to beat it, and get the support you need to follow through on your plans.

Vicki and I will teach three free interactive webinars together in January. Each week has a different focus:

Tue Jan 10, 9-10am PST: Support from Your Heart & Head
Tue Jan 17, 9-10am PST: Support from Others: Co-working, Bookending & Rewards
Tue Jan 24, 9-10am PST: Support from Your Tools: Your Calendar,

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How to Tackle Stubborn Goals: Implementation Intentions

What to do with those stubborn to-dos?

Do you have items on your to-do list that never get done? Tasks you meant to have crossed off ages ago, but instead they linger and get pushed back forever? Or how about those “little” things you want to do regularly (daily sets of push-ups, perhaps? connecting with friends?), but somehow they keep falling through the cracks?

In general, do you find some of your goals particularly hard to put into practice?

Try “implementation intentions”

A technique that helps is to “script” our intended actions in more specific terms by deciding exactly how, when and where we are going to accomplish each of our tasks. Peter Gollwitzer, a psychologist who has done a lot of research on this, calls those plans implementation intentions.

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Dealing With Regret Part II – Advanced Practice

Picture credit: Ted Eytan

How do we best cope with regret about our past decisions?

In response and as a complement to my last post, I want to offer an “advanced practice” tool to deal with regret.

Regret is a complicated state of mind and often involves a mix of feelings. It’s worth getting clarity about what’s what.

For example, one on my clients gave up an artistic career in favor or a more practical path. The grief she felt about giving up a dream could easily be confused with regret, but it is not the same thing. You can experience negative feelings about the consequences of your choice without regretting the actual choice. Give yourself permission to dislike some of the consequences of your choice, while acknowledging that you chose the best possible path (or what seemed the best possible path at the time you had to make the decision).

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Performing under Pressure

Have you ever choked when you needed to perform under pressure?

We all know what it feels like: you’ve been building your skill – whether it’s in academics, in your career, in sports, in performing arts – but when the big moment arrives, nothing seems to work. You hit the wrong note, drop the ball, get stumped by a simple question. In other words, you choke under the pressure.

Here, I will review a book by Sian Beilock about this topic, along with additional research, and I’ll highlight some findings that can help you perform at your own very best, even under pressure.

A book review and practical applications

Dr. Sian Beilock, an expert on performance and brain science, examines in her book “Choke” why we sometimes blunder and perform at our worst precisely when the stakes are highest.

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Summer Reading List 2021: Five Books that Changed my Mind

This past year gave me a fair amount of time to read and listen to audiobooks. Here are five books I found truly impactful, in that they managed to change some of my fundamental previous assumptions and opinions.

Steven Pinker (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

Steven Pinker presents a passionate and persuasive defense of reason, science and progress. He shows with an abundance of data how a commitment to humanitarian values has kept winning – in the long run – dramatically and consistently over the destruction and chaos that would be the easier and more natural course. It is an uplifting as well as urgent perspective that challenges lazy dogmas from both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

To get a first impression and hear his own voice,

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Who Should Make Which Decisions in Your Team?

A practical tool and downloadable template to help determine decision authority.

For the most part, my work focuses on helping people figure out HOW to make good decisions. However, in an organization (or family! or any other group of people), the more urgent and conflict-prone question is often WHO should make which types of decisions, rather than how they should make them.

During a conversation with a client lately, I realized that this, too, is a decision that we can approach with the same frameworks and questions that are helpful for other decisions. In this case, the “alternatives” are people within the organization. In other words, each potential decision-maker is one option, and the main challenge is to define which criteria the decision-maker should fulfill in order to bear that responsibility. Once you have defined those criteria, it becomes much more straightforward to assign the right person the responsibility for any type of decision.

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Career Counseling Update: How Does Online Coaching Work?

This is an update to my earlier post, where I described my career coaching process in detail. While I have always offered and enjoyed online coaching via phone or video, I used to meet most clients in my office. I had therefore written my earlier post assuming a regular in-person setting. Some of the coaching methods I described there, especially exercises giving the client physical cards to sort and lay out, are of course not available in a remote setting. To replace those, I have in the meantime created additional resources and career counseling tools for a remote coaching setting that I am happy to share here.

I have revised the pdf that I’ve shared before to include links to all those online coaching tools and resources. Some of the links are external resources, such as a free assessment of career values that I really like,

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How Does Career Decision Coaching Work?

If you’re considering getting help for a career decision, you may wonder what exactly it would look like to work with a career counselor or coach. Here’s a description of the coaching process and tools I often use when I work with clients on a career decision.

Career Decision Coaching:

1. Defining the Problem

The first step for me is to make sure I understand exactly what your needs are, and what you’re hoping to achieve by working with me. For example, you may look for a change in your career, and for help figuring out which direction to take. If you’re hoping to get clarity in a career decision, we’re on a good track and I’ll be confident that my process can help you.

(If you’re looking for something else, I might be able to refer you to one of my colleagues.

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One Door Down: Welcome to My New Office

Office of Ursina Teuscher, PhD: Decision Analysis and Coaching, at 522 SE 5th Ave, Suite 1118

– Or: My Office Is Now Also an Art Gallery.

I’m excited about my new office space. It’s only one door down from the previous one, and still the same size, but it did get nicer: I got moved to the center of the U-shaped Yeon building (still facing east, looking out at Mt Hood), which gives me a broader view with more window surface. And, I am now the proud owner of four Jean Wuethrich watercolors along with several of his smaller mixed-media travel sketches. One of the watercolors is an impression of the food carts just around the corner of my office.

Office of Ursina Teuscher, PhD: Decision Analysis and Coaching, at 522 SE 5th Ave, Suite 1118

Portland Foodcarts, Watercolor by Jean Wuethrich

Office of Ursina Teuscher, PhD: Decision Analysis and Coaching, at 522 SE 5th Ave, Suite 1118

(Meanwhile, my former space will be absorbed into a larger and finally wheelchair accessible bathroom. I know my building management will do everything in their power to limit construction noise at normal business hours,

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Beat Procrastination Habits With A Three-step Intervention

Do you want to give your productivity a boost? This three-step intervention can help you diagnose and beat some of your most persistent procrastination habits.

Beat Procrastination Habits: Three Step Intervention

Step 1 – Assessment: Diagnose the Problems

Each person is different. What triggers your procrastination?

Procrastination is at its worst when we’re not aware of it. The first step in this intervention is therefore to increase your awareness of what’s tripping you up. You’ll want to get as much insight into yourself as possible, recognizing any problematic habits, or any patterns in your thoughts and behaviors that are getting in your way.

With that goal, keep a productivity journal to collect some data about yourself. You can download a template here and print it out.

Here is how it works: the night before your workday, write a to-do list and a schedule for the following day.

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How to Make Smart Group Decisions – Video

How to Make Better Decisions in Imperfect Communities
By Ursina Teuscher, PhD

This video is a short version (13min) of a keynote talk I gave at the at the XII° Convegno Nazionale S.I.P.CO Palermo, June 7-9, 2018 on how to make smart group decisions.

Summary

In communities that consist of diverse interest groups, it can be challenging to make decisions that are actively supported or at least accepted by all critical parties, despite their differing interests. Top-down decisions may face unexpected opposition, resulting in costs or delays.
This talk presents a process framework and practical tools to facilitate participatory decision processes. The suggested process is designed after a value-focused (Keeney, 1996) and multi-attribute model of decision making (e.g.,

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Employee Coaching ROI: Is It Worth It?

What is the return on investment (ROI) of employee coaching for an organization?

Offering coaching for employees – especially at the executive level – has become a widespread management tool. Companies often hire coaches with the goal to improve performance and develop talents, but also to keep high-performing people within an organization.

However, coaching is an expensive intervention: aside from the fees of the coach, there’s also the opportunity cost of the employee’s time spent with the coach during working hours. Therefore, companies who are paying for coaching for their employees will want to know whether it is a good investment. Does it improve the company’s bottom line enough to be worth the cost?

A look at the evidence

What effects does coaching have? I put together a selection of research articles investigating this question, including all the meta-analyses I could find that have been conducted in the past two decades.

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Workshop: Job Stress Management

Wednesday August 16, 11am-1pm (Portland, OR).

Is your job causing you a lot of unhealthy stress? In my last post, I wrote about the “Sort and Tackle” Technique, and how and why it can improve your stress levels at work. You can now give this technique a try in a guided setting and start sorting out and tackling some of your own biggest challenges at work. In this interactive workshop, I’ll help you prioritize which stressors to tackle first, and design a plan with specific next steps. Find more information and register here.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

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German Translations of Decision Coaching Methods

(And you’ll also find some similar resources in English.)

I’m excited about my upcoming opportunity this month to teach several postgraduate seminars to career counselors in Switzerland again. The topic will be decision coaching methods: how to apply decision support tools in a career counseling setting. For that purpose I created course materials in German. I’m happy to share a part of those materials here, because I know some of my blog readers are native German speakers, or work with German-speaking clients, and have asked me before about resources in German.

The following are all downloadable pdf’s:

Entscheidungshilfen in der Beratungsarbeit – Wegleitung und Methoden
[Not the same, but the most similar resource I have in English: Decision making guideline – workshop handout with exercises]
Vorlage für Szenarienbäume
[In English: Paper/pencil template for scenario trees]
Vorlagen für quantitative Entscheidungsmethoden
[In English: Paper/pencil templates for decision tables and trees]

The first one is a guideline with exercises,

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Valentine’s Special: Chocolate and Coaching

I’m offering a new coaching package for couples. Could you use some help improving your shared time management, figuring out priorities, getting better organized together? If you sign up for your first exploratory Strategy Session before Valentine’s Day, you’ll receive a box of the world-famous Teuscher Champagne Truffles at our first meeting.

Read more about the couples coaching program and schedule a first session here.

Couples Coaching Valentine Special
And no, you’re not the only one wondering: people keep asking me whether I’m related to the “Chocolate Teuschers”. Sadly, not that I know of. But that won’t stop me from loving them, and from using their most delicious treats to get us all started on a sweet note.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

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Binge Working and Procrastination

Thanks to all of you who shared your experiences and thoughts about binge working and procrastination! Your insights have given me food for thought and an opportunity to make an addition to my hamster-wheel image. It now includes an additional stage: what one of my readers called the “tidal wave of joy and relief when you finish the thing and it is a success!”

Binge Working and Procrastination - Revised

It is clear though that there are many individual differences as to how people experience binge working. The figure only shows one type of a particularly stable loop of reinforcement.

For some people, for example, bouts of binge working are very positive and productive experiences, without any of the ill effects shown in the image. For them, intense phases of working around the clock are simply a temporary effort for special projects. Rather than leading to exhaustion and burnout,

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New Productivity Coaching Group

Time is our most precious resource – are you getting the most out of yours? Or are you ready for a change?

My next productivity coaching group will come in a new format, starting with one-on-one sessions and an in-depth assessment before the group meetings.

It is a 3-month package that includes:

Two individual coaching sessions of 50 min each and an initial in-depth assessment of your goals, your individual style, your situation, and your personality along the Five Factor Model (FFM). A part of the assessment will happen during our sessions together, and a part of it will be homework for you in between our meetings.
A copy of the workbook: “Increasing Personal Productivity in Healthy and Sustainable Ways” by Ursina Teuscher.

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Where Can You Be Generous?

A Different Way to Look at Your “Unique Value Contribution”

In an interview with Chase Jarvis, Seth Godin gave me a lot of food for thought when he suggested that we all ourselves this question:

“Where are you being generous – completely selfless and generous – so that an organization or person is changed for the better? Can you do that again and again and again?” (44m 10s)

The question is big, and it is very relevant for career coaching and business development. Even without the – perhaps too high – standard of being “completely selfless”, it gives a beautiful angle to the classic and essential question of: “How can you contribute value?”

For example, with a career-coaching client we might explore the question:
“What skills do you already have,

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Help Me Test a New Coaching Tool

I’m looking for a few volunteers to test a new coaching tool that I might use in online coaching sessions.

I’ve recently discovered this collaborative brainstorming platform: Stormboard. It lets you organize virtual sticky notes on a shared screen.Since some of my favorite coaching methods involve sticky notes, I’m thinking this might be an exciting visual tool to use during Skype or phone sessions with clients.

I have already tried it out with a few colleagues, but would love to gain some more experience with it in “apprentice mode”, to figure out whether and how to use it in coaching sessions.

If you’d like to try it with me (in other words, get a free online coaching session), email me. We can work on any problem or decision you’re currently facing.

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