A Quick and Easy Way to Enhance Your Leadership

"What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide." - Michael Shermer

Have you ever felt this in your leadership?

Here are some ways that I have experienced this phenomena:

  • I worked really hard and delivered on all my projects last year, I should have gotten a bigger raise.

  • I feel like I am plateauing in my career and there is nothing left to learn.

  • I just accomplished my major objective, now promote me.

  • My kids say they are getting straight A's, but I never see them study.

There are times in our leadership lives where the emotion of what we desire can outrun the evidence that is before us.

Closeup of business team showing unity with putting their hands together on top of each other. Concept of teamwork.

Closeup of business team showing unity with putting their hands together on top of each other. Concept of teamwork.

Harvard Business Review (November, 2015) wrote on what they called “The New Science of Customer Emotions." The premise is that when companies connect with customers emotions, the payoff is enormous. The idea is that brands and the companies they represent want to be trusted, but they often fail to align themselves with the emotion that drives the desired behavior.

The authors of the article suggest that if your customer wants to “have confidence in the future,” you will need to show them that future is better than the past by creating positive mental pictures of what the future looks like.

As a leader, how does this apply to you?

In my experience, those under your leadership have different emotional needs that you may meet. Some of these needs include:

  • To be trusted and believed in not only as an employee, but as a person.

  • To feel valued as an individual, and that their work is meaningful.

  • To believe you listen to and understand them through your actions.

  • To rest assure that they may be forgiven if they make a mistake.

  • To feel confident in their current position, as well as what the future may bring.

At this point, you are probably saying, “Okay, so I know I need to connect emotionally.” Yes, you know you need to; but does the evidence support what you believe to be true?

Here is an example of what I mean.

I was in a class not long ago where the facilitator played "The Ultimate Game" with a couple of students. It goes like this:

One person gets a sum of money and is told to split it with the other person and keep the rest for themselves. If the second person accepts the deal, they both keep the money. If the second person rejects the deal, neither one of them keep the money. They will play the game twice. Here is how it worked:

Game 1: Person A gets $100 and decides to give Person B $50. Person B accepted this amount. The teacher said that almost 100% of the time, it happens like this.

Then they play Game 2.

Game 2: Person A gets $100 and decides to give Person B $10. Person B did not accept.

Person A: “Why didn't you accept?” Person B: “Because you got more than me.“ Person A: “Yes, but you still have $10 more than when you started.” Person B: “I know, but it isn’t fair, so no deal.“

Neither Person A or Person B keep any money.

In a non-emotive state, we can see that Person B is being irrational. This person would have received 10 more dollars than they started the day with. This is free money, no strings attached. However, because it did not seem fair, emotion began to cloud the decision-making process and poor outcomes occurred.

It is no secret that emotions are important influences on the decisions we make and the impact we have on other people. As leaders, this is true for us as well. Let's not assume that we are making good emotional connections with those under our leadership. Go out and ensure that they feel valued and appreciated for what they do and who they are. Oh, and by the way, why not collect some data along the way to show you actually are connecting emotionally?

Homework: Look at the 10 emotional needs that you as a leader can meet for your followers. Can you show supporting evidence that you actually meet those needs?

Eating Healthy While Traveling

[guestpost]Jan Tilley is the President and CEO of JTA Wellness, a national leader in nutrition counseling, wellness, and chronic disease management. As a registered dietitian, Jan helps at-risk clients develop a healthy lifestyle to combat chronic health issues. Holding a MS in Nutrition, Jan has over 20 years of experience in the food and nutrition industry. Thank you, Jan, for contributing to the blog today! [/guestpost]

On the Road . . . Again!

Healthy eating on the road can be challenging even for the most seasoned road warrior! Finding healthy food when traveling is not impossible, it simply takes a little preplanning and good ol’ fashioned street smarts to set yourself up for success.

First let’s tackle the basics of healthy balanced eating. It is as simple as 1, 2, 3!

  1. Eat every 3 hours. Our body digests a meal in about 90 minutes so if you are going longer than 3 hours without food you are asking your body to operate on no fuel. Food is the fuel our body uses to keep us energized, focused and productive. Without it we get fatigued, foggy and grumpy.

  2. Carbohydrate + Protein or Healthy Fat. The combination of foods we choose matters greatly! Carbohydrates are our body’s first choice for fuel and are converted quickly to glucose to fuel our brain and muscles. They are digested very quickly and if eaten alone, can cause us to feel dissatisfied and constantly hungry. By adding a protein or healthy fat we slow the digestion of the carbohydrate allowing us to stay feeling fueled and satisfied longer. This combination keeps our blood sugar and our energy to stay stable throughout the day.

  3. Don’t let your hunger get ahead of you! What happens when you allow yourself to get extremely hungry? The tendency is to overeat and make bad food choices. I often see this in my clients who eat very little throughout the day then eat everything in sight at the end of the day attempting to get satisfied. I like to demonstrate this concept using a hunger scale. The goal is to eat within a 3-hour window all day and always balance carbohydrate food choices with either a protein or a healthy fat to stay between a 4 (beginning to have some hunger pangs) and a 6 (satisfied) on the scale at all times.

Practical Tools for the Road

  • Right-size your portions. If you are traveling with a friend or spouse, consider sharing a plate. Usually ½ of a restaurant portion is enough to satisfy if you’ve been fueling all day long.

  • Divide your plate into quarters. Think about what you are planning to order and make sure that ¼ of your plate is protein (i.e. chicken, fish, beef), ¼ is starch (i.e. sweet potato, quinoa, brown rice), and ½ your plate is fruit, non-starchy vegetables and salad. Using this mental exercise will ensure that you are including a variety of nutrients and balancing your meal.

  • Travel days can be difficult. Eating in airports or on road trips can be tricky. Plan ahead to have single-serve healthy, shelf-stable snacks available. Great ideas can be peanut or almond butter packets, nuts, Babybel cheese, Somersaults, jerky, KIND bars, 100-calorie olive packets, light popcorn and pretzels.

  • Limit alcohol. Providing empty calories with little nutritional value, alcohol can decrease your good judgment and drinking in excess can result in poor sleep. Recommendation is 1 drink per day for women and 2 drinks per day for men.

  • Focus on choosing anti-inflammatory foods. A common complaint of travelers is the bloating, swelling, uncomfortable feeling that can result from making poor food choices. Choose more vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, whole grains and low-fat dairy and stay away from pro-inflammatory foods such as highly-processed foods (think chips, cookies, pastries), saturated fats (think sausage and ice cream), and sugar.

  • Take your tennis shoes! Hotels have a gym – use it! You will feel energized, revitalized and ready to ‘kill it’ at your next meeting!

Travel and over-indulging don’t have to go hand in hand! For more information on how to make healthy lifestyle changes, visit my website and sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive my motivational blog along with one new healthy recipe a week.

Take charge of your health and refuse to let travel days get in the way of a healthier, happier you!

Homework

Plan healthy food options before your next trip. Research some healthy restaurants and pack some healthy snacks. Keep a food journal and see how you do! Comment here and let us know how it goes. I'd love to hear about your experience!

Have You Ever Felt Overwhelmed?

Recently, I felt overwhelmed. When I think of it now it seems a little silly. Here's the story:

I was running on all cylinders. Many of you know that in addition to writing this blog, I:

  • Teach and train emotional intelligence for corporate clients.

  • Speak at conferences on leadership topics.

  • Maintain an active executive coaching practice.

  • Am adjunct faculty at Indiana Wesleyan University.

I love it all, but I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with all the travel I was doing, which comes along with these responsibilities. Like many of you, when I show up to any of these responsibilities my goal is to do it with excellence. When I get tired and stressed I have to make sure that I can deliver what my clients need, no matter what the circumstances are in my life.

photo-1433526015711-1458f9013e25

photo-1433526015711-1458f9013e25

I was describing my overwhelmed feeling to a very good friend who suggested I take a retreat.

Where I live we have a beautiful national historic landmark, Bok Tower, which bills itself as a contemplative garden. My friend suggested I go spend half a day there. Here is part of that conversation:

“Retreat! What do you mean?" I asked him. “Just get away and clear your head for a few hours," is what I heard in reply. "I don’t have time” was my response to him.

                                 Big Fat Lie. Really what was traversing my mind were thoughts like:

“What would I do?“ "How would I do it? “I don’t know what to do." “What would I do?” I actually remember thinking this one twice.

It is funny I said that I didn’t have time, but time isn’t really the issue.  I just didn’t know what to do, but I really didn’t want to admit that to my friend.

Here's what I've discovered since then...

When I get that overwhelmed feeling it means that I have so much going on in my mind that I can’t really think clearly about anything. The pressure of all that I have to get done starts to close in around me. My emotions really start to take over and I feel the stress in my shoulders and a shortening of my breath in addition to being overwhelmed.

Dr. Henry L. Thompson, an award-winning organizational psychologist, in his book The Stress Effect, emphasizes that an emotionally intelligent leader must be aware of emotion to be able to “choose when, where, and how to use emotion." According to Thompson, “Anything that interferes with this ability, such as stress, will tend to degrade the application of emotional intelligence." The feeling of being overwhelmed will trigger stress and could lead to outcomes where I may not deliver excellence for my clients.

The overwhelmed feeling I had, along with the stress it produced, meant that my thinking was actually inhibited. I was at risk for making poor decisions, not because of my intelligence or lack of information, but because I needed to step away so that I could be objective.

Retreat Is A Power Position

I didn’t need to step away, or retreat, as a sign of weakness. Actually, retreat is a powerful tool for positioning yourself for strength.

The state of being overwhelmed was causing me to not be able to provide excellence. I had two choices:

  • Slug through it and hope that no one noticed

  • Retreat. Take a step back so that I could re-engage into the circumstance more powerfully.

I chose retreat. And am I glad I did.

So what does this mean to you & me?

The next time you get that overwhelmed feeling, why not take a Personal Leadership Retreat?

A Personal Leadership Retreat is where you carve out a small amount of time (I did 4 hours) and gather your thoughts about the impact your leadership is having.

As a result of the conversation with my friend, I finished a Personal Leadership Retreat a few weeks ago and came out with much clearer thinking. I felt really good about how I spent my time. The benefits for me were:

  • I felt better about my relationship with God.

  • I was clear on what I had accomplished in the first half of the year.

  • I have clarity around things I want to get done in the second half of the year.

  • I have more focus around my core business moving forward.

  • I felt relaxed so that I was making better decisions.

If you are interested in doing a Personal Leadership Retreat, here is the agenda I followed:

8am - Arrive 8-9am - Bible Reading and Reflection 9-10am - Reflections on Leadership 10-11am - Nature Walk 11-11:45am - Leadership Issues that need to be resolved 11:45-noon - Final Reflection

The next time you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, why not take a few hours and do a Personal Leadership Retreat? Once you do, I think you will feel more focused, relaxed, and perhaps even improve your outcomes.

Hey Mike, thanks for recommending this to me. I owe you.

Let me know how this works for you, Scott

Homework: Schedule your own Personal Leadership Retreat. I've developed a step by step guideto help you. Click here to download.In this guide you will get hour by hour instructions on what to do during your retreat. You will get questions to answer to stimulate thought. You will get a list of resources to take with you on your retreat and much, much, more. I would love your feedback on the guide, so if you do take a Personal Leadership Retreat be sure and let us know how it went for you.

Why I Am Scared to Death Right Now

I had a conversation recently with a leader who has faithfully read this blog since its launch. It went something like this:

Hey Scott, I really enjoy reading what you write. Your perspectives are insightful and practical, things I can use every day as I lead my team. But…

There it was.

What I call "the big eraser."

Whenever I hear the word BUT, I get a picture of my first-grade teacher Mrs. Eskew saying, “Scott, would you please erase the blackboard before we go to lunch?” (Ok, now some of you are laughing because I am old enough to have had blackboards and chalk in my formative years.)

I never liked that job. It always felt to me like all the good work we did that morning was being wiped away with a single stroke.

When we hear the word BUT at the end of a string of compliments, our minds suddenly forget all the good things the person said and we prepare ourselves for the attack.

That is what it feels like too. An attack! All the compliments we received when the person started are going to be wiped away with one fell stroke of the feedback we are about to get.

The But

The person giving me feedback continued, “...BUT I tried to download one of the tools you offered and it did not work for me."

I don’t know about you, but when I get feedback like this I experience a full range of emotion:

  • Frustrated that the person had a bad experience on my site.

  • Embarrassed that I had showed a weakness in my system.

  • Curious as to what I could have done better.

  • Appreciative that the person cares enough to tell me what is not working for them.

The person who gave the feedback was not trying to hurt me. In fact, they were trying to be helpful. I really appreciated it. In fact, I tell all my clients to give me feedback because that is the only way we improve.

However, even when we ask for feedback we brace ourselves a little because the unknown can at times be a place that causes fear.

The Ask

So here is why I am scared to death right now:

As I reflected on the story above, I realized that I really wanted to get feedback from all my readers about what they are thinking. The only way I am going to be able to deliver what you all want is to ask you. It would be silly for me to continue to guess at what you want and risk not adding value to your day. So, I am asking for your feedback.

I have been doing this blog for about 6-months now, and I really need to hear from you on what your leadership needs are.

Click here to take a short 10 question survey, that will take less than 2 minutes for you to complete.

For those of you who would like a little extrinsic motivation (see last week's blog for more details on this topic), we will randomly select the name of one survey participant to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card. If you want your answers to be anonymous you are free to submit the survey without including your name, but you will be ineligible to win the $50 Amazon gift card.

The Solution

On Wednesday's Leadership Tip of the Week, I will be sharing with you a practical 4-step process for overcoming emotional moments, like when someone gives you feedback and uses the word “but." This process will help you prevent your emotions from getting the best of you, enabling you to get your thinking mind back in order to receive the feedback. This model is useful and practical any time you feel your emotions starting to take over your thinking.

You won’t want to miss it, so be sure you watch the video.

The Appreciation

I just want to take a moment and say thank you. You all are the reason I do this blog. My desire is to help you and those in your organization to become better leaders. So, what are you waiting for? Why not forward the site to a friend who you think might get some value out of the work we are all doing together?

I truly believe that organizations rise and fall on leadership. My team and I would like to say how much we appreciate you spending your time with us each week. We really do value your feedback, so thank you in advance for helping us develop leaders.

Please click here to take 2 minutes and help us understand what you want in leader development by completing the short 10 question survey.

See you on Wednesday with the Leadership Tip of the Week,

Scott

3 "Iron Clad" Qualities You Want In Someone to Assist In Your Leader Development

One discipline I have worked hard at maintaining since finishing my studies a few years ago has been to read a chapter from the book of Proverbs every morning. I was actually challenged to do this by Dr Ken Boa when, as a graduate student, I was blessed with the opportunity to be his airport chauffeur after he gave a day-long seminar at Indiana Wesleyan University. He was kind enough to personally share his wisdom with me as we drove, even after speaking all day. The reading of Proverbs works well for me as the chapters are relatively short. I can usually work through one in less than 10 minutes. It is easy to know what chapter I am on if I miss a day because there are 31 chapters which line up nicely with the days of each month. In addition to ease, I find these sayings and instruction quite informative and motivating in striving to live a meaningful life.

I often reflect on how few mistakes I would actually make in life if I just implemented the instruction and sayings in the book of Proverbs.

This week on the Monday blog I talked about engaging others as you develop yourself as a leader. One of the Proverbs that has real application for those wanting to continue to develop themselves as leaders is Proverbs 27:17: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

The point of this ancient saying is that you cannot go on this journey in life alone. If you want to improve, it is imperative that you are working with someone on your development who is feeding certain things into your life.

Here are three things you might be looking for in a “piece of iron” who can sharpen you:

  1. Wisdom - Are they someone who leads a prudent life? Prudence is shown as someone who has a good track record of decision-making.

  2. Discernment - Is this a person who has shown they have an acuteness of judgment? Can they hear through your emotion and help you decide?

  3. Impulse Control - Can the person who is developing you delay the gratification of giving you what you want to hear and focus on what you need to hear?

What do you say we build a list together?  Leave a comment below and let us know what quality is most important to you as you pick a coach, mentor, or advisor in your development as a leader.

Have a great weekend,

Scott

Are You Using the Power of Metaphor to Stimulate Metacognition?

I really learn a lot from metaphors and enjoy searching for meaning from other things observable in my life. One of my favorite metaphors for thinking about the context of leadership is the roller coaster.

roller coaster

roller coaster

In the Monday blog post this week my good friend, Dr. Randy Spence, wrote these words:

All of us fail.

We fail in life. We fail in our relationships. We fail in the leadership of our organizations and ourselves.

The question is, do we learn from our failures?

Do we attempt to use failure as a mechanism for growth? Or do we allow failure to defeat us, squashing our ambition and our efforts?

If you have not read the post, Randy did a great job teasing out these questions. You can click here to check it out.

Powerful Questions

Randy asks some powerful questions for those of us who are experiencing the bottom of the coaster ride.

Here is where Randy’s question took me in my own leadership:

Is it safer if I stay in the trench of the coaster or do I climb back to the top? 

How quickly can I get over the self-pity of the trench and find the learning?

Do we enjoy the entire leadership ride or only when we are at the top?

What is the first step I need to take to be able to grow when I experience failure?

As you examine these questions, what 3 or 4 thoughts do they cause you to ponder?

What Does "Metacognition" Even Mean?

Simply, metacognition is thinking about thinking. In the example above, Randy’s powerful questions caused me to think about questions of my own. Hopefully, my questions spurred questions for you.

The great thing about questions is that they stimulate our thinking and creativity. Questions can really help you see the abundance that is all around you.

The power in the metacognitive question is in the journey of growth. There is no power in wallowing in self-pity and doubt. When we get to the questions about what we are to learn from our failing we can start the journey to abundance, back to the top of the coaster ride.

Have a great 4th of July holiday and be curious my friends.

Scott

Have You Ever Felt Overwhelmed?

Recently, I felt overwhelmed. When I think of it now it seems a little silly. Here's the story:

I was running on all cylinders. Many of you know that in addition to writing this blog, I:

  • Teach and train emotional intelligence for corporate clients.

  • Speak at conferences on leadership topics.

  • Maintain an active executive coaching practice.

  • Am adjunct faculty at Indiana Wesleyan University.

I love it all, but I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with all the travel I was doing, which comes along with these responsibilities. Like many of you, when I show up to any of these responsibilities my goal is to do it with excellence. When I get tired and stressed I have to make sure that I can deliver what my clients need, no matter what the circumstances are in my life.

photo-1433526015711-1458f9013e25

photo-1433526015711-1458f9013e25

I was describing my overwhelmed feeling to a very good friend who suggested I take a retreat.

Where I live we have a beautiful national historic landmark, Bok Tower, which bills itself as a contemplative garden. My friend suggested I go spend half a day there. Here is part of that conversation:

“Retreat! What do you mean?" I asked him. “Just get away and clear your head for a few hours," is what I heard in reply. "I don’t have time” was my response to him.

                                 Big Fat Lie.

Really what was traversing my mind were thoughts like:

“What would I do?“ "How would I do it? “I don’t know what to do." “What would I do?” I actually remember thinking this one twice.

It is funny I said that I didn’t have time, but time isn’t really the issue.  I just didn’t know what to do, but I really didn’t want to admit that to my friend.

Here's what I've discovered since then...

When I get that overwhelmed feeling it means that I have so much going on in my mind that I can’t really think clearly about anything. The pressure of all that I have to get done starts to close in around me. My emotions really start to take over and I feel the stress in my shoulders and a shortening of my breath in addition to being overwhelmed.

Dr. Henry L. Thompson, an award-winning organizational psychologist, in his book The Stress Effect, emphasizes that an emotionally intelligent leader must be aware of emotion to be able to “choose when, where, and how to use emotion." According to Thompson, “Anything that interferes with this ability, such as stress, will tend to degrade the application of emotional intelligence." The feeling of being overwhelmed will trigger stress and could lead to outcomes where I may not deliver excellence for my clients.

The overwhelmed feeling I had, along with the stress it produced, meant that my thinking was actually inhibited. I was at risk for making poor decisions, not because of my intelligence or lack of information, but because I needed to step away so that I could be objective.

Retreat Is A Power Position

I didn’t need to step away, or retreat, as a sign of weakness. Actually, retreat is a powerful tool for positioning yourself for strength.

The state of being overwhelmed was causing me to not be able to provide excellence. I had two choices:

  • Slug through it and hope that no one noticed

  • Retreat. Take a step back so that I could re-engage into the circumstance more powerfully.

I chose retreat. And am I glad I did.

So what does this mean to you & me?

The next time you get that overwhelmed feeling, why not take a Personal Leadership Retreat?

A Personal Leadership Retreat is where you carve out a small amount of time (I did 4 hours) and gather your thoughts about the impact your leadership is having.

As a result of the conversation with my friend, I finished a Personal Leadership Retreat a few weeks ago and came out with much clearer thinking. I felt really good about how I spent my time. The benefits for me were:

  • I felt better about my relationship with God.

  • I was clear on what I had accomplished in the first half of the year.

  • I have clarity around things I want to get done in the second half of the year.

  • I have more focus around my core business moving forward.

  • I felt relaxed so that I was making better decisions.

If you are interested in doing a Personal Leadership Retreat, here is the agenda I followed:

8am - Arrive 8-9am - Bible Reading and Reflection 9-10am - Reflections on Leadership 10-11am - Nature Walk 11-11:45am - Leadership Issues that need to be resolved 11:45-noon - Final Reflection

The next time you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, why not take a few hours and do a Personal Leadership Retreat? Once you do, I think you will feel more focused, relaxed, and perhaps even improve your outcomes.

Hey Mike, thanks for recommending this to me. I owe you.

Let me know how this works for you, Scott

P.S. Are you interested in a Personal Leadership Retreat but still feeling like still don’t know what to do? Here is the step by step guide I developed from my own Personal Leadership Retreat. Click here to download the guide and start your own Personal Leadership Retreat. In this guide you will get hour by hour instructions on what to do during your retreat. You will get questions to answer to stimulate thought. You will get a list of resources to take with you on your retreat and much, much, more. I would love your feedback on the guide, so if you do take a Personal Leadership Retreat be sure and let us know how it went for you.

Four Proven Ways to Get Out of a Rut

In the past three weeks I have had at least six conversations that have gone something like this: “Scott, I am in such a rut right now. Any ideas on how to get out?"

The idea of being in a rut is an interesting one.

Wagon-Stuck-Road-Bad

Wagon-Stuck-Road-Bad

What is a rut?

The phrase "stuck in a rut" is said to have originated in the early 1800’s as settlers in America were moving west. The wooden wheels of the wagons they were pulling would get caught in holes or very deep grooves that were carved in the common path being traveled. If your wagon got stuck in a rut, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to pull out and continue the journey.

Today the phrase “stuck in a rut” has a different meaning but similar feeling to it. The feeling of being buried, bored, not motivated, stagnant, or even monotony.  I would estimate that 25% of the coaching I do is with clients who feel like they are in this deep pit and cannot seem to find a way out.

How Do Leaders get Out of a Rut?

Here are four strategies you can use to get out of a rut. I would recommend picking one and see if it works for you. As with all the recommendations we make, there are no guarantees. If something is not working for you try a different approach or a new strategy.

Rest

It is possible for us to feel like we are in a rut when really what we are is tired. In our 24/7 world, where things are constantly coming at us, it is very easy to feel paralyzed and not know which direction to turn. It is like you have eight ropes tied around you and each one is pulling you a different direction. They all have the same amount of tension on them, so you cannot move. You are stuck and what really needs to happen is to release the tension.

Here are three things you can do to rest and relieve the tension so you can move again:

  • Serious Play. Often times we think of play as being for children. However, research has shown that play for adults stimulates higher-order thinking. Play, in this sense, is a voluntary activity involving physical engagement of some type that is pleasurable for its own sake. Take a day and just go play. Do something you get a lot of pleasure out of. Resist feeling guilty or childish and just enjoy it. Reflect at the end of the day on how good you really feel. I find the feeling freeing, and a great way to release the tension.

  • Sleep. You may flat out not be getting enough. Turn off the TV, iPad, Phone, or DVD player, and get 7 to 8 hours of sleep. If you are in a rut, track the amount of sleep you are getting. If you find you are not getting enough, take a nap. Close your door, schedule a meeting with yourself, and close your eyes for 20 or 30 minutes. It can be refreshing.

  • Nature Walk. The walking part is relaxing in itself, and doing it in the woods, on a mountain, or on a beach can be an excellent way to relax. This practice will also help to use pent up energy and help you to sleep better at night.

Reflection

  • Get Clear. Make a list of your priorities. Put them in order and start crossing them off. The physical aspect of seeing things crossed off will give you the sense that you are making progress out of the rut.

  • Find a Friend. Support them. Focus on them. Don’t focus on yourself and your problem. I find that focusing on others and their problems, then trying to help them solve their issues, often helps me. Being an entrepreneur can at times be scary. Then I go serve a community meal at our local Care Center for people who literally don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and I realize that I really have nothing to fear.

  • Start journaling. Then buy Shery Russ’s book The Journaling Life. Seriously, journaling is one of the single best things that leaders can do to keep themselves headed in the right direction. I would encourage you to not only journal what you think, and facts that have happened to you, but also to journal your feelings. Getting emotion out on the table is critical for releasing the stuck feeling.

Retreat

The idea of a retreat comes from an old French word meaning "a step backward."  The word took on a military connotation in the 14th century as an act of withdrawing from action. The reason for withdrawal was to regroup so you can re-engage the enemy again more powerfully than before. Many people I run into see retreat as weakness. Retreat is actually a way for the leader to regain their thoughts and engage their work again more powerfully.

  • Personal Leadership Retreat. This idea is for you to get away by yourself for 2 to 4 hours to just think about where you have been, where you are now, and where you are heading in the future. I just took a Personal Leadership Retreat a week or so ago and have done a video chronicle of my experience and what I learned. You can view it here. If you don't know how to do a retreat this video will give you some ideas on how you could do your own Leadership Retreat.

  • Read Your Bible. One way to retreat when you don't have time to get away for four hours is to take a 20- minute retreat with an inspiring book. The book I turn to most often for inspiration is the Bible. The Bible is, year in and year out, the best-selling book in the world. However, most people just do not spend enough time gleaning inspiration from this masterpiece. One of the verses I turn to most often is Colossians 3:23.

  • Try Fiction. Reading or watching a TV series can be a great way to step back, relax, and prepare to re-engage. My wife and I are currently on a retreat of sorts. In the evenings, we are watching the series Alias on Netflix. The show stars Jennifer Garner and has a spy theme with interesting twists and turns. We call it "mindless", but it helps sometimes to just relax and be mindless so that the next day I am more prepared to engage my world.

Reprogram

You got into this rut by a certain path. If you are going to get out, you may need to do something different that will reposition your perspective. This reframing can be difficult for a couple of reasons: First, leaders may believe that the path they were traveling is right, ergo the rut is on the right path. Second, even when leaders acknowledge they are on the wrong path, being in the rut feels safer than any change they may need to make to get on the right path.

Here are three things you can do to reprogram yourself out of the rut:

  • Get on a new path. Start innovating. Don’t worry about success or failure. Develop an attitude to let go of the outcome and just focus on the quality of the input.

  • Stick your hand up. Let others help pull you out. Start collaborating. Collaboration is an intentional sharing of ideas, which requires give and take, and at times some real humility. Just talking about what path you want to be on can be of great value and begin to extract you from the hole. Walter Isaacson, in his excellent chronicle of how the digital age came to be, made this observation, “Brilliant individuals who could not collaborate tend to fail." Don’t fail. You are smart enough! Reach out, collaborate, and do it with some intentional frequency.

  • Take a risk. Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith is famous for saying “fail forward fast." I am really enjoying a book right now titled Fail Fast, Fail Often. In it the authors provide some very practical advice on how to break free from habitual behaviors that may have you in a rut, and to trust your enthusiasm for a new venture. I know I have said it before, but I do think it is worth repeating: as leaders, we need to let go of outcomes and focus on quality inputs.

Get out of your rut by trying one of the suggested methods of Rest, Reflection, Retreat, or Reprogram.

If I can be of any assistance to you along your leadership journey please let me know. I always give a free, no strings attached, 30-minute consultation if you are stuck and need help getting out of a rut.

Is Your Career at Risk for Derailing?

Is your career at risk for derailing? Not a question we like to think much about, however, it might be better to take a moment and examine the risk factors rather than stick your head in the sand and hope that it is not happening to you!

derailed

derailed

I was recently reading through my journals from my tenure at Eli Lilly and Company. To this day, I treasure and value my time there.

While reading and reflecting on what I had written, the question that is the title for this article popped into my mind. Was there ever a time that my career was at risk for derailing?

The question caused me pause because:

  • I worked hard

  • I was ethical

  • I was competent

  • I had received good and in some years outstanding performance reviews

Why would I ever need to think about my career coming off track when things seem so good?

No one likes to dwell on the negative. However, if there are early warning signs it is a good idea to pay attention to them.

Planning is much easier when things are going well rather than waiting to feel the stress when you are in trouble.

5 Reasons Careers Derail

In 2013, the Center for Executive Education published a list of five career derailers for leaders:

  1. Failure to Meet Business Objectives

  2. Inability to Change or Adapt During Transition

  3. Problems with Interpersonal Relationships

  4. Failure to Build and Lead a Team

  5. Failure to Make the Supervisors' or Organization's Priority a Priority of Theirs

This list is a post-mortem of the most popular reasons that careers have derailed. You do not want to be looking at this list and saying to yourself, "Yes, that is what happened to me. If I had only seen it coming so I could have done something about it."

This list describes why careers derail, but leaders need insight into how this happens.

Emotional Intelligence

From my own personal experience, and the experiences I have had over the last 10 years in working in the leader development space, a key common denominator is: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

A lack of Emotional Intelligence can be a derailer, and if used skillfully a possible antidote.

I have created a tool for reflection that will help you understand how a lack of emotional intelligence can be responsible for these common career derailers, and, as a result, prevent your career from derailing.

CLICK HERE for a free download.

I would love to know what you think of this chart. Do you feel like it is accurate in your organization? Would you add any derailers to this list? Have you noticed any antidotes or development ideas that you would be willing to share with others? If so please let us know by commenting on the blog below.

If you feel like your career is derailing and you want some help thinking it through, I would be happy to help you. As a part of my leadership coaching, I offer a free 30-minute consultation.

For more information email me at Scott@DrScottLivingston.com.

Are You Leveraging the Power of Thinking?

I had an interesting conversation with a young man whom I coach over the phone last week who is  being considered for a couple of new opportunities in his organization. One of the jobs was a promotion into a new area of the organization for him. The other job was a lateral move within his same organizational function, but with a lot of growth potential.  As he considered his options, his knee jerk reaction was to take the promotion because it had a higher pay grade and a bigger title. Heightened senses of emotion can often cloud our thinking as leaders.

Click to Tweet!

Click to Tweet!

I encouraged him to step back from the situation, disengage from the emotion, and just think with me for a moment. To help him process I asked him a series of questions:

  • Where do you see your career 15 years from now?

  • What are the strengths in your skill set?

  • What positive preferences from your personality profile and temperament will be utilized?

  • Are there any negative aspects to your personality that could be barriers?

  • What is it that you really love doing?

  • When you are working, what gives you energy to where it doesn’t seem like work?

  • How would you describe your overall level of stress tolerance?

There is no magic to the line of questions.  They are simply calming questions to lessen his sense of emotion so that he could clear his mind and think. (How are you doing as a leader to make the environment calm so those who follow you can really think?)

A fascinating result ensued! All of these conversations pointed to him taking the lateral move.

As we were ending the conversation he said, “Wow! I can really see how emotion can get in the way of good judgment and decision-making. If  we had not stepped back from this situation and really thought about it, I probably would have taken the promotion and the risk could have taken me into a dead end career."

The promotion sounded so nice.  Who doesn’t want more money and recognition?  But this is the knee jerk reaction. Clearing our minds from what we are emotionally attached to can be of great benefit to us as leaders.

Sometimes tension and complexity come into our lives and this causes an emotional reaction. This can cause us to not think clearly and lose sight of the true direction we want to take.  Please watch this short video for an example of how this happened in my own life:

As leaders we have to be able to step back from our decisions and look at a range of possible outcomes. If we are not intelligent with our emotion, we are destined for outcomes that may not serve us well in the long run.

Is there a place in your leadership life where emotion is impacting your ability to think clearly?

[callout]Consider this: At your next staff meeting ask each person to give one place where emotion is having an impact on their leadership.  Next, ask each other non-threatening questions to clear the emotion and help each other think more clearly.[/callout]

We would love to hear from you on this topic of clearing emotion to increase thinking.  Please share your comment below.

Relational Leadership and Pareto’s Rule

The Pareto principle is one of the most common axioms I hear leaders describe when considering outcomes. It is also commonly known as "the law of the vital few" in which 80% of the effects we experience comes from 20% of the efforts being given.

I experienced this with a client who was having a difficult time getting motivated setting goals for the year. He had completed an analysis of his business and noticed that of his 165 or so clients, only 13 of them provided 80% of his business The other 150 or so clients  made up the remaining 20% his business. He knew he had to call on all of his clients, but felt like "what is the point".  If this was a straight college grading scale , he could get a “B” with the 13 clients without even trying, and the thought of trying to motivate the other 150 was overwhelming.

This client happened to be in sales. However, the analysis he provided is really about leader and follower relationship. Sales are the result of the relationship with the follower, or in this case we call them clients. Those of you who lead churches for example may not think in sales terms, you may have other metrics you measure. No matter the metric, if you lead people, it is about the investment in quality relationships that matter.

The client and I decided to make a game out of motivation by saying, “OK let’s NOT think about this year”. He is 32 and I challenged him to think about where he wanted to be in his career when he was 60. He said he had no idea, and I was reminded of the children’s classic, Alice in Wonderland. Alice was walking along the road and when she came to the fork was puzzled on which way to go. The Cheshire Cat looked down out of the tree and said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”.

[Tweet "Leadership lesson: 'If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.'"]

Developing yourself as a leader requires that you know where you are going. So I had him write a narrative, a story of about 1 page that is descriptive in nature, of what he envisions doing in his sixth decade of life. I challenged him to be descriptive and emotional in his writing of this one page novel.

This writing of your personal narrative can be quite freeing as a leader. If you are feeling stuck in your goal setting, write a picture of what you want your goal attainment to be and then work backwards to create the steps that are needed to get you there.

Now that my client has identified what he wants his story to be, he must work to turn it into reality today. We took Pareto’s rule and continued the game by putting his customers in three buckets, then describing what his emotional connection is to them for the year. Next, we applied what we all know about top performers: that if you stretch and care for them they will produce even more. Notice there are two important facets here:

  1. Stretch them. Give them bigger goals, bigger targets. Believe in them, really show them that you think they can do it.

  2. Care for them. Support them. Give them resources. Encourage them along the way. Top performers will do great things for you if you support them.

Here is what it practically looks like:

  • In the first bucket are the 13 who provide 80% of his business. His connection to them is one of nurturing He wants to support them, and provide for them so they continue to grow. The idea is to give them the support they need to reach their full potential. However 13 is probably too many for him to fully invest in without ignoring the other 150.

    • From these 13 in the first bucket, he now chooses 5 who have the potential to make his vision a reality. We called them Drive with 5. He picked 5 clients that he wants to be more assertive with in their development. He wants to be intentional about getting more business from them, and really give them a lot of his emotional energy and time. The development with these 5 is where the stretch comes in. Give them bigger goals. Give them more of a chance to have breakout kinds of success. Invest in these leaders. Spend more time with them and give them coaching and encouragement.

    • His second group of clients are the 150 or so customer that make up 20% of his business. The question to ask about this group is: "Who has potential to rise into the first bucket?" He is having a dating relationship with them. Getting to know them better and deciding for next year which one or two of them will become part of his Drive with five. What are their strengths? How can he capitalize on their strengths so they can become more self-aware of what their potential really might be?

    • The next segment is those still in the 150 group we call Future Harvest. This is the balance of your universe of relationships. This pool will always be there for you in small capacity. They are important because they make up your world of relationships and potential. They are important for stability and support. You need them, so do not ignore them. Love them and treat them well.

    • Last, my client sent me his narrative, as well as the names of his Drive with 5 and his dating list. We are going to discuss them on every coaching call. Accountability is another key to making your dream come true. Even Alice in Wonderland had the Cheshire Cat to hold her accountable!

I believe this process can work whether you are in sales, a minister in a church, an IT manager, or a company president. We all have a finite number of relationships we engage with that make up our 100%. The question is, which ones are you going to invest in to make your life goals a reality? Keep in mind that this leader I was working with had over 100 clients and so the narrowing to 13 and then to 5 to really invest in made sense in relation to his overall numbers. If you have 60 in your sphere of influence you may only want to invest in 3 or 4. If your sphere is smaller you might pick one or two. The actual number becomes less important when you are starting. The most important question is, besides yourself, who are the leaders you are going to invest in to make your leadership vision a reality?

[reminder]What are your thoughts about breaking down the important relationships in your life like this? [/reminder]

[callout]I have seen this process work time and again to help people analyze relationships for leadership investment. I believe it will work for you to think about who in your sphere of influence you should be intentionally developing to allow your leadership vision to become a reality. Click here to download a free pdf tool that will walk you through these three steps to help you analyze your relationships.[/callout]