Learning Stress Tolerance

I had an interesting conversation with a coaching colleague the other day. He called me to get some perspective on a difficult client that he was coaching.

Case in Point

His client is a top performer in her field and has aspirations to get promoted in her company. She is a very hard charger and a self-proclaimed perfectionist. Overall, she is respected by the team she leads, but that dynamic is starting to show some cracks. 

In meetings, she is always telling her team to push back on her, and that she is open to feedback. However, the team has recently started shying away from doing this, because when they do, her non-verbal communication says she is not in the mood for it. Her words say “I am open”, but her facial expressions say “Don’t you dare”. 

Her team says she is a workaholic, routinely sending emails around 2 AM. If someone asks her to be in a mentoring relationship, she always says yes. If her bosses ask her to do something, she will call the team together at any time of the day to kick off a project and make assignments. 

My colleague spent a day shadowing her. He went to meetings with her and observed her in her office where her phone rang and text alerts went off constantly. She answered the phone by the second ring and usually picked up the phone to answer her texts within 30 seconds. 

One of her teammates even pulled my colleague aside and said they were really concerned about her, that she rarely takes time to eat and when she does it is only half of a cup of yogurt. They said something to the effect of: “We don’t know when she sleeps. Stuff comes to us at all hours of the night. People on the team have started sleeping with their phone alerts on so that they don't miss anything. This can’t be healthy long term…can it?” 

When I asked my colleague if he had addressed any of this with her yet, he said “yes, to all of it.

Her response to him was that:

  1. She loved work, so why wouldn’t she do a lot of it?

  2. She has always strived for perfection, and that's what got her where she is today.

  3. Her bosses love her production.

  4. She feels fine. She eats when she is hungry and she doesn’t require much sleep. 

She Is Not Fine.

The lie that this leader is telling herself is that she is fine. She is not fine.

While things may seem okay to her right now, she is on a path to self-destruction. I have seen this pattern too many times in my leadership coaching. The person who is striving so hard that they never say no, and they have no boundaries.

According to Dr. John Townsend, in his book Hiding From Love, one of the most basic human needs we all have is that of “Integration; Our need for resolving good and bad”. This person just always says yes so that others feel good about them. This is the person who gets a 95% on a test and feels like a failure, so they start believing that the only way to live successfully in the world is to always get 100%. 

Dr. Townsend says that this temporary solution to the tension between real and ideal is always inadequate and involves some sort of splitting between good and bad, keeping the two apart rather than resolving them through forgiveness, both of themselves and others. 

The problem continues for folks like this leader because while it is a psychological concern, it will eventually manifest itself physically as well. 

Dr. Gabor Mate, MD, writes in his book When The Body Says No, that our immune system does not exist in isolation from daily experience. Many people unwittingly spend their lives under the gaze of a powerful and judgmental examiner whom they must please at all costs. 

Gabor goes on to write that stress is a complicated cascade of physical and biochemical responses to powerful emotional stimuli. When emotions are repressed and dissociated from our awareness and relegated to the unconscious, this confuses our physiological defenses and our immune system goes on the attack rather than being in protection mode. 

What I found most interesting in studying Dr.Mate is that almost none of his patients with serious diseases had ever learned to say NO. 

Back to our example: no, she is not fine. She is living in a self-delusion.

George Vaillant said, “It is not stress that kills us. It is effective adaptations to stress that allows us to live.” 

Stress tolerance is the ability to withstand adverse events without developing physical or emotional symptoms by actively and positively coping with stress. One way to positively cope with stress is to learn to resolve the good and the bad. It is what Brene Brown has written extensively on, to begin to look at imperfection as a gift. 

Learning Stress Tolerance

The growth of this emotional intelligence domain takes some very specific work.

The first is developing an understanding of the need leaders have to understand the tension that exists between the ideal and the real, and to resolve the need to understand between good and bad. There is at the beginning of this kind of development the setting of healthy boundaries. There is no need to try to put other coping strategies into place if a leader is going to keep unhealthy boundaries. They just need to know that at some point in the future the data suggests that the body does keep score. There will be a payment due on this kind of life choice.

Once some healthy boundaries are put into place, things like progressive relaxation, purposeful distraction, self-debate, deep breathing, exercise, and spiritual worship can be employed. 

Leaders who are experiencing feedback like my colleagues' clients need to heed the warnings.

The Feedback Is Telling Them Something

You can grow your tolerance to stress in a healthy way. A way that you can become an even better performer and leader. A way that might not have to be as costly to your psyche and your overall health. 

Don’t Forget to Practice Good Self-Care

You might recall from last week's post that an old friend had called me and asked for some tips about working with a new boss who was proving to be a tough relationship - 5 Ways To Work With A Difficult Boss.

The next morning, I was doing some personal development work of my own in the area of staying resilient during times of stress. In my personal journey, I have been working on this because it has been an interesting and somewhat challenging start to this year for me.  The year was lined with lots of potential goals, but at this point, not a lot of work has been committed to them.

I have faced some challenges and obstacles in this business that I have not faced before. A little bit of rejection. A little bit of waiting. Quite a few promises. Not too many signed agreements. I was feeling a bit defeated and wanted to capture this and work on how I can be resilient during some of these setbacks. “Taking a bit of my own advice” is how I might position it. 

One of the things I will often tell my clients during times of difficulty is to make sure they are practicing good self-care. Was I practicing good self-care during this difficult time in my business? 

What comes to mind is the analogy of how during an emergency on an airplane, we are instructed to “put our own mask on before helping others.”  I know it is maybe a bit cliche, but let's make sure the point is not lost.

I think it is safe to say that most of us when times get tough, the first thing that goes to the wayside is our own wellbeing. We stop practicing good self-care and we just try to do a decent job of psychologically coping with what is going on in our world. 

This is the one more thing I needed to call my friend back and tell him - that during times of difficulty, like working with a difficult boss, also remember this - don’t forget to practice good self-care

My Homework

As I will often do with my coaching clients, I gave myself some homework. I pulled out an exercise I had done in the past to evaluate my own self-care and where I might need some replenishment. 

I looked at 4 areas of my life that are critical for me to be at peak performance:

  1. Physical Life: practices that cultivate the health of the physical body

  2. Emotional Life: practices that support the relational nutrients that we need

  3. Intellectual Life: practices that stimulate our curiosity, thinking, and knowledge

  4. Spiritual Life: practices that expand our soul and connect us to things outside ourselves.

I think it is really important that if you are working on something like stress tolerance, stress management, or resiliency, you look more holistically at your life. 

For example, most of the time when I ask clients about their self-care they respond with, “I am not getting as much exercise as I was in the past.”  Sure, exercise is an important element of physical self-care. But inside of caring for yourself in the physical domain, you need more than just exercise.  As leaders, we need to focus on our diet, our sleep patterns, and ANY practice that cultivates the health of our physical bodies. 

So I took an inventory of these 4 aspects of my life to see if anything was missing.

Physical:

  • I do OrangeTheory workouts 4x’s a week

  • On off days I golf or walk 3 miles

  • I get 8 hours of sleep

  • I balance my nutritional macros

Emotional:

  • I read or listen to one non-fiction book a month

  • I attend my TLP (Townsend Leadership Program) group

  • I attend my Coaching Cohort Group

  • I practice telling my wife what I need emotionally from her 3x’s a week

  • I play golf at least once a week

Intellectual:

  • I teach twice a year

  • I do Dissertation Chair and committee work

  • I read one work-related book per week

  • I listen to one work-related podcast per week

  • I read one biography per month

Spiritual:

  • I attend church weekly

  • I attend my church small group weekly

  • I am generous in giving to others

As I was examining some of the things I currently do, I felt really good about the physical, emotional, and intellectual things. However, on the spiritual side of my life, I am feeling a bit robotic and stale. So I am going to ask around to some trusted advisors and my coach to see if there are any insights they may have. 

How About You?

All of us go through ups and downs in life. Sometimes we connect well with our boss, sometimes not so much. Sometimes we love our jobs, and sometimes not so much.

When was the last time you took an inventory like this? If you did, would you notice any voids in your life?

I had a client, who is a nurse, tell me recently that early in her career she did a lot of bedside patient care. She worked at a famous healthcare institution and had taken care of quite a few wealthy and famous people. She told me that none of them cared an ounce about how much money they had in their bank account at the end of the day. All they wanted was to talk with those they had close relationships with about how they had lived their lives.

That story, while I for sure had heard it before,  just like the old airplane and oxygen mask warning, really hit home for me.

I want to make sure I have the right flow in my leadership life in all aspects, not letting just one dominate my being. I hope you will take some time for yourself and do an inventory as well to see if you have any self-care practices missing in your leadership life.

Patience and Urgency - Part 3

I hope you are enjoying this series on how you can be both patient and have a sense of urgency at the same time.  Last week I included three coaching strategies related to how you can become more patient in your life as a leader. If you missed the post, you can read it here, and the introduction to the series here. This week I will be focusing on how you can answer this question by getting comfortable with change.

Turn and Face the Change

I had a coaching kick-off meeting this morning with a brand new coaching client. Anytime I have a meeting like this, the first thing I explain to the leader and their supervisor is that they are going to be growing as a leader through the experience of coaching. The next thing I say is, “And growth is uncomfortable. That is okay though, because if we feel different, that is a sign we are growing”.

Then I pause for effect.

Then I ask, “Are you OK with being uncomfortable”? 

Most of the time, my new clients tell me that yes, they are ready to grow! Or they say something like “I am really looking forward to the experience”. 

While both of these might be true, they still do not really answer the question.

I want you to stop for a minute and really think. If I asked you to incorporate a change in how you are leading your team right now, that this change in behavior is going to require you to do something different, and it is going to make you uncomfortable at first, would you be okay with being uncomfortable?

I will speak for myself at this point and say, “NO, I am not okay being uncomfortable!”

Who is? None of us likes to be uncomfortable.

However we all know that with this feeling comes the growth we desire.

Case in Point

For the past 6 years I have been a big fan of working out at OrangeTheory Fitness. Earlier this morning, I completed an hour-long workout that included 20 minutes of inclines on a treadmill and frankly it was uncomfortable. Our trainer Dani kept giving us words of encouragement like, “I know this is hard, but you didn’t come in here to stay the same. You came in here to change.” (At least that is what I heard, because honestly I was so uncomfortable I had a hard time focusing on exactly what her words were!)

As we develop ourselves as leaders we have to connect with this idea that our growth is going to be uncomfortable. When we are comfortable with wherever we are, we can develop natural resistances to change. This resistance to change or familiarity with the status quo has at its base some underlying emotions. 

If you pay attention to these emotions, they are telling you something. When Dani told us about the treadmill portion of our workout she said, “Don’t be afraid of the hills! You will finish this and you will be better on the other side.” 

What Dani was calling to our attention was the fact that we could expect change. And that this change was going to be uncomfortable. Also that our emotions could be telling us to not jump into the change. But instead of paying attention to these emotional resistors, we should engage in emotions that lead to acceptance of the change. 

I have included a chart below of some common emotional resistors and the accompanying emotions that lead to acceptance. 

Changing to be Patient

As you reflect on a change you may want to make in your leadership life, anticipate these emotions. For example, you may want to write a plan so that you can become more patient, but then you start to feel anxious and you begin to argue with yourself. This is when you can say to yourself, “I might feel anxious right now, but I am going to choose to feel satisfied as I write my plan to overcome.” 

My encouragement for you as a leader is to embrace the feeling of being uncomfortable as you grow. Then as you feel the resistance, step into it and turn it around so that the feeling becomes positive and encouraging. As you do this, celebrate the fact that your emotions were telling you to stay where you were, but you were able to overcome them and be the leader you desire to be.

Next week I will finish up the series by integrating our previous discussions on developing patience with the idea of having urgency.

Patience and Urgency - Part 2

Last week's blog post was formed from a question I received from one of our readers. If you missed the post, you can read Part 1 here. The main question was:

How Can We Have Patience and Urgency at the Same Time?

Growing up as an 8-year-old boy in Central Illinois, I loved baseball. But maybe even more than the game itself, I loved the Chicago Cubs. 

Ernie Banks at first base, Glen Beckert at second base, Ron Santo on third base, Don Kessinger at short stop, Jim Hickman in right field, Don Young in center field, Billie Williams in left field, and my favorite, Randy Hundley behind the plate. 

If it was a really great day, Fergeson Jenkins was on the mound as the pitcher. And Old Jack Brickhouse was quoting Ernie Banks, begging the teams to “play two games”.

I just love the Chicago Cubs! In those days the Cubs were on WGN TV and the games started at 1:05 pm. I could watch an entire game on TV and then go out and grab the guys and have enough daylight to play our own game. If we were lucky, we could get two in that day as well. I loved the Chicago Cubs so much, I dreamed of being one. Playing all kinds of organized baseball, the game as an 8-year-old came pretty easy to me and I loved it!

Then, as I got a little older, something began to change. The pitchers could throw the ball at different speeds. As a batter, as long as the ball came to me straight and fast, I could hit it a mile. But then, as the pitchers got older they learned not only how to throw the ball at different speeds, they could make it curve as well. If the speed was slightly different, it threw off my timing and the ball became very hard to hit.

I know I am not alone out there. I can only imagine how many of you had similar dreams. My dreams of playing for the Chicago Cubs ended when I just couldn’t hit the dreaded curveball.

The curveball in Baseball is known as an off-speed pitch. It has two primary features: it is thrown at a slower speed and it moves off a straight line. This means that the hitter has to be patient in order to be able to make contact with the ball. As a batter, if you can be patient and wait for the ball to get to the plate, and you can see it move, then that ball becomes easy to hit. The problem is that it really isn't so easy!

Patience

As I grew older, the pitchers gained more skill and the baseball kept moving at different speeds and on different lines, so I started to strike out more and more.  The more I would strike out, the harder I would swing at the ball and the more impatient I became. I was so frustrated, I would swing the bat at where I thought the ball would be only to whiff and hear the umpire call “strike three!” 

I just didn’t have the skill as a young player to be patient and wait for the slower speed pitch. In my brain, the ball should have been coming at a faster speed and I found it really hard to just wait for it.  If I could have been more patient at the plate, maybe, just maybe I could have worn those blue pinstripes of my beloved Chicago Cubs. 

Patience, according to Merriam Webster “is an ability to wait without becoming annoyed or upset”. For me, it is being able to suspend your personal need for satisfaction and action. For leaders, patience is all about being able to slow down those fast-paced exchanges with others in order to facilitate higher-quality interactions and better decision-making. 

It seems like the faster things go, or the more urgently we feel the pressure, the more we want to execute NOW! Just like trying to hit a curveball, trying hard or succumbing to the feeling of urgency doesn't help us hit it. What leaders need is an ability to slow their world down. 

As the pressure in the organization builds, as the requests from senior management become stronger and more frequent, most people will feel this urgency and just want to do something. If we are doing something, we feel good. It doesn’t matter if it is the right thing, at least we are trying.  It is a bit like me trying to hit the curveball. At least I went down swinging. didn’t hit the ball. But at least I did something. I wasn’t successful, but I tried.

I think the key is to be aware of what the pressure or speed of the change is doing to you and not become annoyed or upset. Once frustration starts to set in, now we are putting additional pressure on ourselves, and our ability to perform is drastically reduced.

3 Coaching Strategies for Being Patient

Patience is not racing ahead in one’s thought processes while missing the nuanced, but important information that others are trying to share. Sure you want organizational change. Yes, you need it now! But putting so much pressure on yourself could cause you to miss critical things that others need to provide input on. Here are 3 things I work on with my coaching clients when patience is a desired virtue:

  1. Write a plan. It is amazing to me how many leaders do not want to sit down and write out a simple plan. A plan that includes people, times, dates, and objectives.  Just writing out a simple timeline can help calm our minds down so that we can see the speed at which we need to move. Then, if we need to move faster, we all are working from the same plan.

  2. Use STOP.  This is a model I use to help clients slow down and think. It needs to be implemented before you feel the pressure building. However, if you find your mind racing, it can be used then too. The strategies are simple, but the implementation isn’t always so easy. Like learning to hit a curveball though, with practice, this can be a valuable tool.

3. Gates. I use the analogy of being on a walk. Going from one place to another when all of a sudden something changes or you start to feel pressure. When you do,  think of the following 3 questions as “gates” you can walk through just to slow yourself down and give yourself some time:

  • Gate 1: Ask yourself “Is It True?” What evidence is there that what you are experiencing is real? So many times, we put so much added pressure on ourselves that is unnecessary. If it is not true, then there is likely no reason to continue this mental exercise. Just stop at the first gate. If it is true, then proceed to Gate 2. 

  • Gate 2: Ask yourself “Is It Necessary?” Many times, being a leader myself, something might be true, but I just don’t need it. For example, I might feel like I am being attacked, but is it really necessary for me to defend myself? Just because I feel it, doesn’t mean I need to act on it. If it is not necessary for you to act, then you can stop. You have talked yourself off the ledge and there is no reason to move on. If it is both true and necessary, proceed to Gate 3. 

  • Gate 3: Ask yourself “Is it kind?”. Sure it might feel better for me to unload on someone, or make another department my scapegoat, but is it kind? Would I want someone to say the same thing about me? It might be true, it might be necessary, but if what I am about to say is hurtful or lacks compassion, then should I really walk through that gate? 

What all three of these strategies do is help you develop some patience in the face of urgency, tension, and complexity.  They are meant to help you slow down and think.  

Who knows, someday someone in your organization might throw you a curveball and you might just hit it out of the park!

Think Differently as You Set Goals for Next Year

I’d like to share a story about an inexperienced leader named Charlie. He shows up to work early and stays late. He’s motivated to move from an individual contributor into his first front-line leader role, but he’s not sure how to make that happen. He’s getting grief from his wife for working weekends, and his heavy workload doesn’t ever seem to ease up. How can he move into a leadership role if he’s buried in his current role?

Charlie’s organization is offering a course on Leading with Emotional Intelligence and his boss is encouraging him to attend the class. Charlie feels conflicted. According to his research, if Charlie puts this training in the form of a goal that has a useful future orientation, he is more likely to get the results he is looking for, rather than to put the goal in some prevention connotation.

Research published in the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies (Sadler, T., Gibson, S., Reysen, S. (2017), reports the effect of a leadership training program on consideration of future consequences. (Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 10(4), 35-42.)

To operationalize this a bit, let’s say that you have a team of leaders who are all functional experts; Human Resources, Engineering, Information Technology, Sales, Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance and so on. This team, in the past, while getting along personally, has conformed to operating in silos. Each person does a great job of representing their own function to the face of the organization, but as a team, they struggle to get the synergy that will propel them to the next level.

The sales leader was always trying to maximize sales and didn’t understand why Marketing couldn’t supply the customer segmentation data fast enough. And why did it take Engineering so long to get the prototype built and delivered to the client? Engineering, on the other hand, was frustrated with Supply Chain who just couldn’t get realistic estimates on how much materials were actually going to cost.

The president of the organization, realizing the leaders were all doing a great job of representing their individual role, needed to function better as a team. She was encouraged by a colleague to explore the idea of a training program that would focus on team building.

But would it be successful? Would the organization get synergy from the team development so that the return on the investment would be positive for shareholders?

A good question. A fair question.

Turns out the data is a little mixed on what should be expected.

A Little Background

It is no secret that organizations spend billions of dollars every year on training people in their organizations. Everything from skill-based training, like how to weld two pieces of metal together, or how to write computer code. Then, from more leadership-oriented topics like Leading with Emotional Intelligence or Writing Your Own Leadership Story, to team building events.

Whether the training is skill-based or cultivating leadership in our organizations, the question always surfaces as to what is the return on investment.  There is research that can help us determine if leadership type training is effective in helping leaders meet their goals. But it depends…

Goal Type

It turns out that when it comes to goals, leaders pursue attainment using one of two strategies:

  1. Promotion: concentrating the efforts of achievement on positive proactive and productive results.

  2. Prevention: targeting efforts on avoiding negative outcomes.

Let’s revisit our friend, Charlie. If his orientation is more to prevent something bad from happening or toward thwarting a negative future response, then his success in the training and as a future leader is in question.

How can Charlie (or his boss) orientate the training as to get a more successful outcome for him as a leader? If Charlie says to himself, “I want to take this leadership training because it will help me be a better coach and mentor to others in the organization someday,” then the aspect to his goal attainment has shifted.

Charlie is moving from individual contributor to organizational leader, and that is what is going to help him get what he wants.

How are you orienting the goals of folks in your organization?  Are you creating a positive, futuristic orientation of hope for the future, or are you trying to prevent failure?

The orientation of our thinking matters!

Oh, Those One-On-One Meetings….

Recently, I have been rereading CS Lewis’s autobiography, “Surprised by Joy.” If you have not tackled this one, I highly recommend spending some time with it. Lewis has a unique way of really opening my eyes to some fascinating ideas and contrasts. One that struck me was his approach to European poetry. For a long time, there was an order that the greats were to be read, like the Iliad and Sohrab (in that order). Lewis approached the reading of these classics and made this observation:

“It does not matter at what point you first break into the system of European poetry. Only keep your ears open and your mouth shut and everything will lead you to everything else in the end.”

I thought, what a powerful message for leaders. Keep your ears open, have some empathy, keep your mouth shut, display some impulse control, and everything will work out for you in the end. 

How many times do we not do that? We get mad, spout off, stop listening, have no impulse control, and then make bad decisions and are filled with regret. 

Sometimes leadership is about patience, humility, and relationships. Maybe MOST of the time leadership is about these things. 

Linking Lewis to Leadership

As I was reading the above section in Lewis’s autobiography, I was wondering where leaders could work to apply the lesson of “keeping your ears open and your mouth shut”. I had even done some journaling around this and nothing was coming to me.

Then I had a call with one of my coaching clients, who wanted to discuss his approach to one-on-one meetings with people on his team. 

When I probed him about the genesis of his question, he lamented that he and his direct reports just didn’t have that much to discuss. Especially to warrant an hour every week or two.  He felt up-to-date on their progress by the emails he received. And he felt the meetings were a bit forced and awkward.

As we continued our discussion, it became apparent to me that this leader was focused very much on the tactical outcome of his one-on-ones. This is the “what” conversation is all about. In this part of the conversation, the person on the team focuses specifically on the tasks they are working on, “what” they are doing.

What I noticed might be missing in the conversation were some of the weightier opportunities for “how” his leaders were acting, “how” they were making choices, and “how” they were motivating and inspiring the teams that report to them. Then second after “how” is “why” they were doing what they were doing. “Why” did they make a certain decision, and “why” did they think a particular action was motivational or inspirational?

These more strategic elements of a conversation take some curiosity on the part of the leader. If the leader has a good question around “what” the associate is doing, then they can implement Lewis’s idea of opening your ears and shutting your mouth. 

One on One Philosophies

After we finished this discussion on having productive one-on-one conversations he asked if I had any philosophies on the one-on-one meeting. 

 I do indeed have some philosophies on one-on-ones. Every good philosophy should have a pillar or two on which it is built. So let me offer this as the anchor to my take on the one-on-one meeting.

Philosophical Pillar: People need to feel connected to their supervisors.

The one-on-one meeting is the opportunity for you to connect the associate to yourself and the organization. This is where you build your relational trust. So your focus and undivided attention are necessary for the associate to feel heard and understood. 

Rules of Engagement

I think to build trust, you need to have some rules or boundaries. These need to be communicated to the associate. 

You can set your own rules, just keep in mind the philosophical pillar and ensure the rules you set along with your philosophy.

Here are my 4 rules for engagement in one-on-one meetings:

  • Associate sets the agenda. If the supervisor has a need they should set up a separate meeting.

  • If the subordinate has nothing to update, then they cancel the meeting. The supervisor never cancels the meeting, they can only reschedule and it has to be within 1 working day. Too many canceled meetings mean that I am not building the kind of trust I need to be effective as a leader.

  • For the subordinate, I suggest 4 types of one-on-one meetings. Alternating between these types helps to prevent the meetings from being monotonous. 

  • I like a weekly meeting cadence, alternating between the 4 types. 

4 Types of one-on-one meetings

  1. Project updates- Usually occur biweekly

  2. Professional Development- Occurs monthly or every other month

  3. People update- Occurs monthly or every other month

  4. Strategic Vision-Quarterly

So it might look something like this as it is implemented:

Week 1- Project update

Week 2- People update

Week 3-Professional Development

Week 4- Strategic Vision

Week 5-Project update

Week 6-People update

Week 7-Professional Development

Week 8-Project Update

Week 9-People Update

Week 10-Professional Development

Week 11-Project Update

Week 12-Strategic Vision


The Leader sets the expectation

I think the most important thing to remember is that you as a leader need to set the expectation for what these meetings need to look like. Then turn the implementation of the meeting over to your associate. If you give them the big picture and the framework, you then have the capacity to open your ears and really listen to the associate. Helping them feel valued and heard is a big part of what your leadership is all about.



Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

Omicron.

Like it or not we are all either learning the Greek alphabet for the first time or being reminded of a time when we first tried to master the 24 letters.

Whether Omicron wreaks havoc on society or fizzles out as fast as it came, our virtual work world seems to be here to stay. One thing the Coronavirus pandemic has caused organizations to rethink is how work is done. What people do has remained pretty consistent, but how they get it done has made some seismic shifts, causing in part what some are calling a “talent migration.” 

From my vantage point, an overwhelming part of the great talent migration has to do with workplace flexibility. I also think that this movement is away from what we all knew as a traditional flex model to hybrid work. In the traditional flex model, an employee could work (wink, wink) a day or so from home when needed. Some organizations even went as far as to declare a specified ‘work from home’ day. The shift that employees are asking for, or perhaps even requiring, is that they want to work from home indefinitely, or want to only come into an office only when absolutely necessary.

This shift is only in its infancy as workers reprioritize what is important in their lives. Organizations need to brace themselves for new levels of competition and not having as much talent around to compete. 

At the end of the day, what will win this tug of war is the culture of the organization. Those organizations with great cultures will have much less migration than those that merely think they have a great culture. 

There will always be a story of a person who leaves and triples his/her salary. I think we all tip our hat to them and say “good for you.” However, as leaders, let's not be fooled into thinking that people always leave for money. 

Employees want to be fairly compensated for what they do. The leadership and cultural battle is going to be waged not on what the associate is asked to do, but on how they can do it.

I think the call for us as leaders is to engage strategic thinking around flexible, hybrid work. In leadership, the future belongs to the curious and flexible. Those who can engage a growth mindset, be curious about what the talent is looking for, and be agile with the changing business landscape will evolve and win. 

Those with a fixed mindset may get their way. The question is for how long. 

Like it or not, hybrid work is here to stay, in some form or fashion. Even long after all the Greek SARs viruses have mutated away or herd immunity is achieved, some mix of working from home for knowledge workers is a new reality.

Like many of you, I have had to learn to adapt to this new business reality. Everything from virtual doctor appointments, to picking out tile for a remodeled bathroom, to individual and group coaching sessions have gone from face-to-face interactions to a virtual environment. I am realizing that no matter how much I want work to go back to the way it was before COVID, it will not.

Since I am imploring leaders to have a growth mindset around hybrid work, I have been challenging myself to see what encouragement I could offer to enhance the skills of leaders to retain talent. This has led me to observe how people are interacting virtually. 

Most of us have gotten past some of the initial communication disruptions like dogs barking in the background, or cats climbing on keyboards, or people walking in the background of a video chat. The struggle has become about being more effective with people when you are not in the same room.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

  1. Focus on Energy. Judith Glaser in her book "Conversational Intelligence" encourages leaders to make communication about the exchange of energy and not information. She calls this Transformational Communication and it is a Share-Discover model versus an Ask-Tell dynamic. When you focus on the energy in the conversation, you create space by exploring others' perspectives, innovating, and creating. As a leader, you move from listening to the other person to protect yourself and your idea to instead listening to ensure you connect with the other person and they feel heard. The skill to develop here as a leader is for you to ask questions you don’t have answers to and to help the other person feel heard.

  2. Principle of Physicality. This is a term I coined some years ago when working with sales professionals who had to be ready at a moment's notice to communicate with a customer. Pay attention to your physical environment. Get some good feedback from others on what your physical environment looks like on a video call.

    1. What is your background? It doesn’t have to be perfect; it should be professional.

    2. How is your camera positioned; are you looking at it or is it pointing down at the top of your head? 

    3. What kind of lighting do you have? If you are not well lit, people can't see you and it is hard to develop the energy needed.

    4. How are you connecting with audio? Can you maintain a consistent audio connection for an entire call?

  3. Give Trust. Many of us, with a new hybrid model, are going to have to rethink what trust means to us. The employment agreement we have had with folks has always been built on trust. The difference is we thought as long as we were coming into an office and could see them that they were working. With the knowledge workers of today, leaders need to learn to set clear expectations for what and how work is to be approached and then trust that people are doing it. If there is a problem or a gap, then create psychological safety to address the gap. Don’t fall into the trap that the performance gap is the hybrid work model. You don’t know this gap would not have existed if the person was coming into an office every day. Remember, the employment agreement is still built on trust. As leaders, we may need to spend some time thinking about what this means for us. If assumptions in how people work are changing, what do we need to change to accommodate?

Flexibility is a significant part of a leader's emotional intelligence. Understanding and being flexible with how you feel about things prevents you from developing a fixed mindset. Stay open. Stay curious. If people are migrating away from your organization, work hard to find the real reason why.

Give it a listen...

On this first Monday of the new year, I wanted to share a fun opportunity I had recently to be a guest on my friend Lee Stephenson’s podcast, Unfiltered.

I won’t spoil our conversation, but if you have 30 minutes and an interest in emotional intelligence, I think you’ll enjoy it. Click here to give it a listen.

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If you’d rather read our conversation, you can find the transcript by clicking here.

Thank you, Lee, for having me!

When Negative Self-Talk Creeps In

A good friend of mine (and an avid reader and commenter on this blog,) Ken, submitted my name as a speaker for an organization he is affiliated with. He emailed me asking if I would consider giving a talk and facilitating a dialogue on the value of emotional intelligence (EI). I am always humbled when anyone thinks that I might have something valuable to say when it comes to EI. It is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, and I often use the EQi 2.0 in training programs I do and with almost every coaching client I work with does a self-assessment that shows them what their leadership habits may appear like to others.

Now, here is what you need to know about Ken. His job is to serve as a hospice chaplain in Polk County Florida. His request was for me to come and speak to a group of his peers and his boss on the subject of how EI can be of value to a hospital chaplain.

Gulp! I have to admit, the email produced mixed feelings in me. Like I said above, I was humbled for sure, but scared out of my pants as well. Hospice chaplains...really?! While I might know something about EI, my immediate “knee-jerk” reaction was, I don’t know anything about hospice chaplains!

Then the negative self-talk started to creep in:

  • You’re no expert in hospice care.

  • What do you know about how to fit EI into their world?

  • You have never even studied EI in this context, what if there is no data?

  • Your not a very good public speaker.

  • Maybe you should call him up and back out.

Now, am I the only one this happens too? When you are hit with a complex, tension-filled situation what do you do? Do you immediately become filled with fear, anxiety, and self-doubt? How do you stop the negative self-talk from creeping in and taking over your thinking?

Here is a quick and easy method that I use when this happens to me: I use an acronym I call "STOP." It is a four step method that helps me turn my negative thinking into a more positive and constructive use of my time and energy.

STOP

Stop: Do something to interrupt the cycle of negative thinking.

Take a deep breath: Breathing relaxes your tension, releases dopamine, and calms you down to think more clearly.

Other focused: Exercise empathy and become curious about what it is like to be in the other person's shoes.

Purpose a question: Asking questions can have a calming effect and bring you more into a zone of safety than one of fear.

Here is how the model helped me get rid of the negative thinking and increase my confidence in this situation:

When I first noticed the negative thinking creeping into my mind with the thought, you’re no expert in hospice, I should have taken the time to put this model into effect. Unfortunately, even though I teach this stuff, I got all the way down to, maybe you should call him and back out before I put this into practice.

Stop: Psychologists call this pattern interrupt. I noticed the negative thinking and I did something physical to draw attention away from the negative thought. In this case, I was sitting down when I read the email. When I finally noticed the negativity, I stood up. I concentrated on doing something different. Distract yourself away from the source of negativity.

Take a deep breath: When I stood up, I took several yoga style breaths. Focused on bringing my belly button to my spine. I actually could feel myself starting to calm down. This is often when I will also say a prayer, asking God for wisdom as I navigate these treacherous negative waters. I distracted myself from the negativity for a moment. That is the goal with this step.

Other Focused: I tried to take the thoughts off of myself and my shortcomings. I put my thoughts onto Ken and his team instead. I began to think, what might they need from a model like emotional intelligence? What value could it bring them? Notice the questions starting to form when I start to turn my thinking from self-referential to other-focused.

Purpose a question: I crafted an email back to Ken asking him, what are some common situations that hospital chaplains find themselves in where they need more EI? What had other speakers done that the chaplains found valuable? How had he used EI in his work as a hospice chaplain?

I noticed, then, that my fear and anxiety were dissipating into curiosity. I was moving from a lack of self-consciousness into a state of confidence by focusing on the value I could bring to this group of dedicated servants.

Self-Actualization and Optimism

According to authors Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book, EI always exists in balance. This is pretty easy to see when we think about a leader who is very self-confident but lacks any empathy or interpersonal ability. We often put a label on a leader who has this balance of qualities as being someone who is arrogant at best, and a real narcissist on the more clinical side of the psychology

In my case, I am usually a fairly self-perceptive person. This means that in part, I get a lot of meaning and purpose out of my life and the work I do. This is a real strength for me.

Most of the time I am optimistic, which means I have a positive outlook on the future and am fairly resilient in the face of setbacks. However, this ability can come into question, especially when fear or anxiety enter the stage. My optimism can turn into a negative downward spiral of self-critical thinking.

What I need when I am faced with these fears and anxieties is to balance my self-actualization and my waning level of optimism.

The STOP model helps me to put the brakes on the negative thinking, so I can use all the meaning and purpose I get in my life to teach and coach emotional intelligence, regaining my level of optimism.

I am happy to report that Ken and I have a call scheduled to talk through what value EI can bring to the hospice chaplains and the talk is scheduled for mid-April.

Homework: Where do fear and anxiety creep into your leadership? Can you anticipate when these events occur? When you feel your thoughts going negative, try using the STOP model to see if it can bring you back into emotional balance.

What Great Leaders Do When Bad Things Happen

It seemed like a complete disaster. It was a project that our team created, organized, and executed, yet the outcome we received was far from what we desired. Sound familiar? It should, as we’ve all experienced the feeling of failure at one point in our lives. Whether in the workplace, in a sporting event, or other moments in our daily life, this failure can cause many different emotions such as frustration, disappointment, and most of all, fear.

In his new book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move The World, Adam Grant (Wharton’s four-time teacher of the year) gives some practical advice when we face fear. Instead of letting fear drift into anxiety or dread, reframe it into excitement. For example, in a study of people who fear public speaking (listed as one of the biggest fears people experience), the participants were divided into two groups. One group was given these three words: “I am calm." The other group was given three different words: “I am excited."

Which group performed their speeches better?

This one-word difference caused listeners of the talks to rate the “I am excited” group as 17% more persuasive and 15% more confident than the “I am calm” group.

Turning your fear into excitement can energize you to act. If you remain to calm for too long, there is a potential for negative self-talk and anxiety to set in. My hypothesis here is that the old advice of “remain calm” when you are in fear is really, "lower your anxiety and get moving." To remain calm for too long can cause paralysis in times of tension and complexity.

When you face times of tension, stress, and fear, how do you react?

We developed the CHECK list that we wrote about last week to give you a tool that will help you move forward when you are experiencing situations that bring fear.

Consider the Situation

It can be difficult to look at your situation objectively, considering the result of the project didn’t meet your expectations. Ask yourself the following questions to help you reflect and move forward:

  • What went well?
  • What could be improved?
  • What needs to change or be omitted?

Hear from Others

Take it to your team and colleagues. Ask them the questions that you asked yourself above. Create a space that allows them to speak into the situation and feel positive through a process of brainstorming the solutions. Including them will motivate them in moving forward. If your team is stuck, consider bringing a coach into the situation to offer a fresh perspective and facilitate conversations or the planning process.

Eliminate Negativity

It requires a full 360 shift perspective to begin to see failing as a learning opportunity instead of as failure. Ryan Babineaux and John Krumboltz talk about this feeling of failure in their book, Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win. In their research, the authors found that people who are happy and successful spend less time planning and more time acting. Now, there is planning involved prior to action, but what these people do is act on their plan without emotional fear based baggage. These folks get out into their universe to try different things and learn from their mistakes. From their perspective, failing is learning, not failure.

Conduct a Plan

Once you've looked at the situation objectively and heard from others, you can go back to the drawing board and work out a plan for moving forward. As mentioned earlier, try not to dwell in the planning stage. Instead, implement action. Consider adding some check-ups throughout your plan to track the progress along the way. Include someone in these check-ups for accountability.

Keep Your Head Up

Believe in yourself and in your team. Let others see your positive attitude and resilient behavior focused on moving forward. They will follow your lead and look to you for support or motivation. Approach your project from a different angle than before to give it a fresh feel for you and your team.

Homework

Reflect on a project or situation that didn't go the way you planned. Write down what went well and what could have been done differently. Share these thoughts with a colleague or mentor and brainstorm a plan for improvement next time.