Mike Donahue – Proust Questionnaire

Mike Donahue, executive coach with Newgrange Consulting, joins us this week on the Proust. Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

 1. What is your most marked characteristic? Empathy, I’m very good at picking up the subtle non-verbal cues of others. A friend of mine calls this “emotional radar.”
2. What is the quality you most like in a man?
I value openness and honesty; I don’t like braggarts. I enjoy the badinage that guys do with each other.
3. What is the quality you most like in a woman? My wife is the model for what I like in women; I admire her strength and confidence. We raised our daughters to be that way.
4. What do you most value in your friends? Loyalty.
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Procrastination.
6. What is your idea of perfect happiness? I prefer to think in terms of fulfillment rather that happiness (or success).
7. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? To not have a purpose that motivates and gives you a reason to get up in the morning.
8. Who are your favorite writers? The last three works of fiction I read were by the late Nevil Shute. When I do work-related reading about leadership, I’m a fan of Lee Thayer.
9. What is your current state of mind? Contentment.
10. What is your motto? I borrowed my motto from Viktor Frankl; he said “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
11. What is your greatest fear? Rejection – It hurts to lose a coaching client or a member of one of my Vistage groups.
12. What is your greatest extravagance? High performance German cars and top shelf single malt Irish whiskey. Though I never indulge in these extravagances at the same time!
13. On what occasion do you lie?  I’ve read that the opposite of truth is withholding, embellishing, cloaking, or lying. I’m far more likely to embellish than to lie.
14. What do you dislike most about your appearance? My gray hair. Just when I started to like being a red head, my hair began turning gray.
15. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “What would you say if you did know?”