Are You Dealing Effectively With Emotional Exhaustion?

My wife and I are currently on a much needed and restorative vacation. We are spending time with our kids and grandkids and refreshing by emotionally disengaging from the business for a few days.

It is the idea of emotional disengagement that I want to challenge you with today.  When you take time away from your work, whether it is on your day off, or over a holiday, or perhaps a vacation or sabbatical, are you able to emotionally disengage?

I know some of you will be saying, "No way! I could never do that. I just can not emotionally disengage," there is:

• Too much going on with the new product launch

• There are performance reviews due the week I get back

• There is a significant shortfall in revenue and I need to have action steps in place

• Email. There is always email. It just never seems to stop.

• I will look weak or unprepared if I take my foot off the gas and drive the organization.

I have heard every reason leaders give as to why they have a hard time disengaging. Worse yet, at some point in my career, I have probably said them all too.

As I was journaling about this very topic, two things really stuck out to me:

First, I don’t think I realized how tired I was until I took some time off and really rested. Second, I am putting way too high of a value on my self-regard. I made so many excuses for why I was unable to emotionally disengage. I told myself:

• I am so important that the product won’t launch without me.

• I am the boss and people need to know my opinion of their work.

• Superman to the revenue rescue! I am the man who can turn it all around in one week!

• I might miss something or more likely someone will need my opinion.

• I can’t afford to look weak or unprepared.

While no one wants to admit when they need a dose of humility, a healthy check of mental restoration shows us that there is tension in this equation. I don’t know a leader who wants to look weak or unprepared, so rest assured I am not saying this. What I am saying is that if leaders do not actively disengage themselves from time to time they are at risk for becoming emotionally exhausted.

Emotional Exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion is the core factor in what is commonly referred to as burnout. This that state of having nothing left to give to others physically or emotionally to others. It leads to poor performance, low levels of commitment, and turnover.

According to work by Leiter and Maslach on emotional exhaustion, the first sign to watch for are feelings of being overextended. When you would normally leave work around 5 or 6, but find yourself still answering emails or taking work home with you. Being overextended can show itself in a number of ways, from poor prioritization to losing your “cool” and getting frustrated by things that are usually no big deal.

Now neuroscience kicks in.

Your reptilian brain senses your fear that you are not performing at your best. Then your need to survive kicks in. If I don’t keep going I will lose my job, you tell yourself in your thought life.

When you notice this kind of self-talk it is time to stop, take a deep breath, invoke feelings of empathy for others, and start asking questions. This process has been shown to slow down your survival-brain so that you can engage your thinking mind.  When you engage your thinking mind you will realize that this is not a time to work harder, but to take a break.

In my experience, leaders not only need to be on the lookout for themselves, but also for others in the organization. This same line of research shows that those most prone to burnout are often the most dedicated and committed to the organization, working too much, too long, and too intensely. Three factors are common with the type of person susceptible to burnout.  The individual may want to please others to the extent that he or she feels guilty when requested to give more time, has a strong need to help, and experiences boredom due to a routine job.

I am Experiencing Emotional Exhaustion…Now What?

According to Barari and Barari (2015), EI training has been found to be effective in leadership training and reducing burnout. Additionally, implementing employee intervention programs, like “What You Know About Stress Is Killing You,” which identify stressors and helps build a plan to buffer the effects of negative emotions caused by stress, have been found to be very effective in reducing some types of emotional exhaustion. Finally, because positive interpersonal relationships are absolutely vital in reducing both workplace stressors and employee turnover, ensuring that you lead a culture that values and supports friendships between coworkers is a must. Programs that promote healthy work-related relationships and team bonding are vital.

Remember, your knee-jerk, reptilian brain, emotional response to exhaustion is to power through it. Science says the opposite. These unique times we are living in may make it difficult for some to grab a cup of coffee with a friend, but make it your goal this week to schedule a phone call, or better yet, a Facetime or Zoom. Purely for the benefit of connection and enjoyment. Notice how it affects your stress level.

Or better yet, why not schedule that vacation you have been dreaming of taking?

Homework: Why not identify some stressors that you are feeling and talk with a coach or mentor about some things you might do to relieve the stress and some of the emotional exhaustion you are feeling. The other thing I recommend is that you schedule a vacation, and this time try to disengage for 4 or 5 days in a row.
 

Do This and You Will Never Work a Day in Your Life

The last 2 days have been really fun!

Every month I lead an Emotional Intelligence Certification course. The folks who sign up for this course do some pre-work reading, then spend two days with me learning how to interpret and provide feedback using an emotional intelligence assessment. This 2-day class is a very full two days! We start at 9 am and finish at 4 pm both days, and there is some homework in the evening for the participants. In total, probably 12 hours of class time in two days. 

Normally if I spent twelve hours teaching over 2 days, I would be exhausted both mentally and physically.

In addition to spending 6 hours each day certifying people, later in the evening, I led coaching supervision for 2 classes I am teaching for Concordia University in Irvine, California. These supervisions occur with 6 to 8 students and run 2 hours each. There is an intense amount of listening and instructing that goes on in these sessions, to the point that after I lead a supervision course I am usually exhausted.

As I have been reflecting this morning on the certification and supervision classes that just finished, I realized something. I am far from exhausted; in fact, I am energized. 

That caused me to begin to get curious around why.  Why is it after a very intense week of human interaction using video technology I am really full of energy?

What I came up with is not rocket science, and I can assure you there is likely nothing on this list that is a revelation for you:

My List

1. Exercise. My wife and I worked out by either going for a long bike ride or doing our Orange Theory workouts 5 out of 7 days this week. There is something about my workout that gives me energy and life. I don’t always love doing it, but I am coming to realize that I don’t like how I feel when I am not exercising regularly more than I dislike the actual exercise. So, for me, working out is a part of what I do for energy.

2. Diet. Small meals more frequently was the theme of this week. No junk food. Mostly fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts. When I eat healthily I just feel better than when I eat a bunch of stuff that is processed. I have more energy when I am consistent with my diet.

3. Sleep. 8 hours every night this week. I am actually really focused on this. I am a believer that this one might be more important than the first two on my list. Mathew Walker, in his book, Why We Sleep,  convinced me that we have work policies about smoking, substance abuse, ethical behavior, injury and safety, and disease prevention, but insufficient sleep, another harmful and potentially deadly factor, is commonly tolerated and even encouraged. Too many leaders, according to Walker, mistakenly believe that time-on-task equates to task completion and productivity. This insanity (my words not Walkers) can cost upwards of $54M annually according to a recent study done across four large US firms.

4. Fun. A 2016 study by Barbara Plester and Ann Hutchison explored the relationship between fun and workplace engagement what they found was that workplace fun offered employees a refreshing break and created a positive feeling for the person about their work. If it was fun, they were more engaged in the work. It is what researchers for years now have called “flow.” While it was for sure a long day of “work” for me, what I reflected on was that I was in flow, and it was really fun. 

5. Sabbath. This is an interesting word I think that might not be familiar to all who read this post. Many will see this word and immediately run from it as some kind of religious icon. I don’t see Sabbath that way. The origin of the meaning of the word Sabbath likely comes from the Abrahamic traditions and is associated with the biblical creation story where God creates all of the physical world we experience in 6 days, then on the 7th day He is said to rest. Because of the origin of this story, some will reject the idea out of hand. Others will make it an idol and will worship the day and miss the point entirely. To me, the Sabbath is an experience where I rest and live my life differently from how I live it the other 6 days of the week. I set it apart and rest in it. For me, it includes worship and meditation. It might include a different form of exercise, or cooking a meal I wouldn’t normally cook. It is not a set of rules or do’s and don’ts but it is an idea where the day is different. I really like what Dallas Willard is quoted as saying, “If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.”  I took Sabbath last week.

So, that is my list. Nothing earth-shattering, but I think the difference this week is that I did it! I didn’t just think about doing it. I didn’t just have the head knowledge that it should be done. I actually DID these things.

As a leader, I suspect there is nothing new under the sun you need to do to “never work a day in your life.'“ But there might be something you need to experience that you already know.

By the way, I am going on vacation next week. Which is another form of Sabbath for me!!!

I will still have a post but will write it in advance so I can really detach and rest. Now as my good friend Mike Risinger says about vacation…"detaching and resting”…now that sounds like fun!!

Have a safe and happy 4th of July. Get some rest!

If you are a leader, please read this NOW. It is affecting you, too.

Last year I worked on a project that brought a lot of value to a client of mine, and in the process, I have become more self-aware of some changes I need to make in my own journey.

Here is the background story:

My client asked me to develop a 90-minute training on the subject of Implicit Bias. 

The project sounded interesting to me for several reasons. First, I have not done anything with the topic since graduate school. Second, I have been reading in the mornings from a little book by Parker Palmer called, “On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, & Getting Old.” He has been speaking into my life as only Parker Palmer can about some baggage I am carrying around that I no longer need. These things started as unconscious biases, but through the work of Palmer, I have become more keenly aware of them.

Now for this story to make sense you have to know, and you can probably tell, I am a huge Parker Palmer fan. I read everything he writes, and most of it two or three times. There is just something about how he speaks truth through his own journey in life that I cannot get enough of.

As I work on this project, I am researching the topic of Implicit Bias. The implicit part means unconscious, so what I am NOT talking about are biases we realize we have. One example of a known bias I hold is that if I have a choice between any kind of ethnic food I will always choose Asian, specifically Thai…even over tacos, which is not easy for me to say.  When eating ethnic food, I realize I have a bias toward Chicken Pad Thai, Coconut Rice, and Panang Curry!

Implicit biases, however, are unconscious, inflexible beliefs about a particular category of people.  Implicit bias is basing our thinking on people not as individuals, but as a nameless, faceless group. Implicit bias is not what I like or don’t like about an individual person, but more about an attitude toward an entire group of people. 

To familiarize yourself with the idea of Implicit Bias and how it might be affecting your thinking, try this little thought experiment.

Thought Experiment

Record the first thought that comes to your head when you read the following list of words:

• A person in a wheelchair

• An immigrant from Mexico

• A single mom with 4 kids

• A person from New York City

As you completed this little thought experiment, a couple of things can happen:

1. If you know someone who fits the description in some way, you use them as a substitute for an entire group of people. This could be positive or negative.  For me, I do not personally know any single mothers with 4 kids. But I do have a mom who had 4 kids, who stayed at home until all the kids were out of the house. My personal experience then becomes part of the frame that shapes my thinking about single mothers with 4 kids: that they should stay home with the kids until they are grown.  Again, not a proud moment for me, but one that I have to realize is shaping how I view the world. I put all moms with 4 kids in a category in my mind that this is how they should all be because this is what my experience has been.

2. If you do not know someone in this category personally, then you likely have had some experience along the way that will be shaping your thoughts. For example, when I think of a person in a wheelchair, the first thought I have is “they slow me down in the airport.” I am not proud of this thought, but this is an Implicit Bias I have. After all, isn’t the entire world about me? If I see someone in a wheelchair, I have a knee jerk thought reaction that their time is not as valuable as mine. I just really want to make myself puke when I write this.

Okay, I am tired of self-disclosing right now so you can play with the rest of these categories of people to decide for yourself if you are proud of how you responded. The more honest you are with yourself, the more you can change your thinking with some self-awareness and dedicated thinking.

Now that I have completely exposed myself to some unconscious biases that I have…enter Parker Palmer into my life to bring some motivation for me to think differently.

In the book I mentioned above, on page 154, Palmer writes about self-awareness and self-examination. He states, “…this call [for self-examination and self-awareness] goes back as far as Socrates, who believed that the unexamined life is not worth living.” Palmer adds, “the unexamined life is a threat to others.”

Ouch!  That one hurts.

Especially since I do not mean to intentionally do harm to Mexican immigrants or single moms with 4 kids, or people in wheelchairs.

But the fact is, I might be harming them. And this is what I need to go to war with.

Because my implicit biases are unconscious, it is only by bringing them to my consciousness and going to war with them that I can make necessary changes in my life. 

My Recipe for Change

I am following a three-step process in confronting my unconscious  biases:

1. See
   I am really trying to watch out for unconscious bias in my life. I am trying to become more aware of when I categorize or group people and then apply wholesale thoughts about them to my situation.

2. Think
   Once I recognize that I am judging people by groups, I am trying to become more empathetic toward them. To really ask myself what it would be like to be them?  Christian Kaisers, in his book, The Empathic Brain, writes that more empathic individuals activate their own actions more strongly than less empathic people while watching the actions of others. We need to practice flexing our empathic muscle to get better at it.

3. Do
   Up until this point, I have not taken any action. The only way I build stronger muscle is to do something positive to change my thoughts. Dr. Sondra Thiederman, in her book 3 Keys to Defeating Unconscious Bias, says “attitude follows behavior.” I need to be specific in seeing people as individuals, and then I need to take it a step further and get to know them. If I do not know any moms with 4 kids, then I need to find a few of them and learn what it is like in their world.  If I don’t know any Mexican immigrants, then I need to seek them out and ask what it is like to be them.

Thank you to my client and to Parker Palmer. You all have rocked my world, hopefully for the better.

Do You Suffer From Presbyigetis?

I have had several discussions recently with business owners and senior business leaders who are working through how to successfully transition employees back to work as stay at home orders are being lifted.

These are complex issues and there is, I believe, no one right answer for every organization. The issues in New York City are very different from what they might be in rural Montana. This is what lead me to begin thinking about Presbyigetis.

Just so you know…I made up the word “Presbyigetis.” That said, I think it deserves some consideration, so I hope you will hear me out.

First, let me unpack the word.

Presby...

I am currently reading a fascinating book, Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin, who is a neuroscientist and so for many of us has instant credibility.  Just say the word “neuroscience” and people give you automatic rockstar status, mostly because we know the brain is important and yet most of us couldn’t name 5 parts of the human brain anatomy.

I can just see that as a question on Family Feud. Steve Harvey says to the contestant, “We surveyed 100 people and got their top answers to the following question; ‘Name a part of the human brain.’

Two answer boxes pop up. One theme is Cerebral Cortex with 98 people saying this structure. The other is Amygdala with 2 people naming that.  The reason these are the only two is that it is about as deep as most people can go, so when you say neuroscientist….well, I think I made my point.

In his book, Levitin has a section on perceptions and how they change as we age. He goes to great lengths to write about how, as we age, we can help our perceptions change for the better. One thing he argues is taking care of our physical bodies. Our 5 senses like seeing and touch, taste and smell, are critical to keeping intact because these are the inputs we have for creating perceptions in the first place. Levitin makes the case in his book that the most common of our senses to fail might actually be hearing (although seeing is probably right up there). The medical term for a loss of hearing is...

Presbycusis.

it literally means “old hearing.” Just like Presbyopia is “old seeing” and Presbyterian means “governed by elders.”  The ‘Presby’ comes from Greek and means “old.”

Now old is not necessarily bad. With age also comes things like experience and even wisdom. In the case of our hearing or our eyes what it means is that if we have presbycusis or presbyopia we will probably need some help in the form of hearing aids or glasses.

Presbyigetis

…igetis as derived from the Greek as well. It means leader. So when you put the Greek for old, Presby; with the Greek for leader…Presbyigetis, you get Old Leadership.  

We don’t have any physical fix, like a pair of glasses or hearing aids, we can stick on leaders to aid in their ability to lead. If someone invented that, sign up every human organization everywhere.

But we don’t.

What we do have are tools and assessments that can help leaders and followers get a better understanding of who they are. Things like personality traits (Myers Briggs, Predictive Index, Pearman, Disc, etc.) and assessments for emotional intelligence like EQi 2.0, and even MSCEIT. These are all good and insightful, but they have all been around 15 years or more.

Sure, something new comes to the market like the Enneagram and gets popular, but it turns out it is no better than a horoscope at giving valuable insight into who you are (All you Enneagram lovers, please no hate mail! I know you love your tool, but just because you love it doesn’t mean it is valid or reliable. You love it and I am good with that. What is it that PT Barnum said…”There is a sucker born every minute.”

It just doesn’t seem like we are getting any better at this leadership thing. Our country is more divided today than it has ever been. Our world is more divided today than it has ever been.

As I was doing some research for this article I came across a quote from a couple of researchers, Messick and Bazerman, from 1996…24 years ago. “Executives today work in a moral minefield. At any moment, a seemingly innocuous decision can explode and harm not only the decision-maker but also everyone in the neighborhood”.

I have to be honest, one action…seemingly innocuous…creating harm and havoc. 

3 Things to aid your Presbyigetis

1. Focus on and teach values-based leadership. Talk about it in the morning when you rise, at lunch when you eat, and in the evening as you go home. Know the values are for your company (and family) and talk about them. Challenge each other on them.  Be open with each other when you see values conflicting with each other.  Values naturally conflict with each other and we need to talk about how this impacts our cultures.  Firms are quick to talk about wanting things like “speed” and “quality” and “cost.” Most firms will have discussions and laborious meetings about the trade-offs realizing they can never have all 3. You can have speed and quality but not save money.  You can lower your cost but it will lower your quality.  You get the idea here.  How many discussions have we had around “valuing people” “making money” and “corporate brand” or even how do we nurture relationships with “employees”, “customers”, “suppliers”, “the street” when it comes to decision-making.  Really, all of these come down to what you really value. You can say you value this or that, but it is the actions of your organization that show what you really value.

2. Practice Impulse Control. Tension and stress and the speed of life are high these days. But they were high back in 1996 when Messick and Bazerman wrote their article. They where high back in 1964 and 1945 and 1921…Societies of people experience stress, the only thing that changes is the context.  Leaders who exhibit good impulse control have the ability to not yell and scream when they don’t get their own way.  Check your ego at the door, take a deep breath, and chill out. I can only imagine how important a decision or a conversation feels to you in the moment when you feel all the pressure. What if I told you that people saw you as intolerant, hot-headed, leap before you look, abusive, inability to maintain control, and tempestuous?  You might cringe. You might say “that’s old so and so, you know how he is.” Until it ISN”T and as the leader, you harm everyone in the neighborhood.  Practice some impulse control.

3. Get In Touch With Your Spiritual Side. If you do not believe you have a spirit then I have given you 2 things to work on above. You can stop reading now. This next point is just not for you.  For those of you who believe you have a spiritual side, it is time to invoke it. You have ignored it for too long. It is time to pull out whatever reference you use, for me, it’s The Bible, and read what it says then start practicing what you are reading. Most spiritual books call for things like love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. Notice that I did not ask you as a leader to pull out your policy manual or the “law” which prescribes justice.  Look where justice has taken us! Perhaps the biggest mistake we made as a society during the COVID crisis is paying for an extra streaming subscription instead of spending some time reflecting on what it really means to be human.

Do you suffer from Presbyigetis? If so spending some quiet time learning how to become a neaigetis, a new leader, might be just what the doctor ordered.

A Much Needed Staycation

Happy Memorial Day!

My hope is that this post finds you well, safe, and enjoying your friends and family, however you might be doing that this year. 

I don’t know about you, but I need a week off!  That is what I was just reflecting on with my wife last night.  I am not sure I have worked this hard and not traveled on an airplane in years…maybe ever!  I am sure it is not the work per se, but all of the additional stress COVID has brought into my world. Our discussion was getting emotionally raw; I was sharing how down I was because:

• I had not been able to be face to face with any clients.

• Our dream vacation to Israel has been canceled.

• Our future cruise to see the Northern Lights and the Fjords of Norway has already been canceled.

• Maybe worst of all, my Granddaughters dance recital has been canceled, and so my trip to see her was nixed as well.

After reading that list you might be down too.  Then, my beautiful wife said to me, “Why don’t you just do a STAYCATION next week?”  

BRILLIANT.  The woman is BRILLIANT.  

So as you are reading this, I am likely at home:

• Doing nothing

• Cooking a meal from an actual cookbook that I have always wanted to try but not had the time

• Reading poetry 

• Reading fiction

• Playing golf

As I am thinking about this STAYCATION I am getting really excited and having a hard time writing anything worth your time to read. So here are links to 5 of my favorite posts from 2020. You might have missed one, or two, or hey, even all five:

1. The Top 3 Emotional Intelligence Mistakes Every Leader Should Avoid

2. A Strategic Piece Of Advice For When You Receive Critical Feedback

3. 5 Strategies To Be Resilient In Stressful Times

4. Surprise: A Requirement For Getting Unstuck

5. 5 Tips Based On 15 Years Of Working From Home

Enjoy your week, I am for sure going to enjoy mine!

There is a whole lot of this and not much of that going on these days...

Throughout the past 6 weeks, I feel like I have just been talked at. 

No dialogue. No asking my perspective.

It feels like my boss has come into my office and said, “Do this, think this way, shut up, and go here!"

There is a lot of talking AT people going on these days. No one seems to be listening.

Somehow, it feels like no one has any time to listen to anyone anymore at all. We have all become experts in our own minds on mRNA technology, vaccines, Remedesivir, statistical curve flattening…even though very few of us have even taken a calculus class to know what flattening a curve really means...or is it statistics?

If you are not sure, then I have made my point!  We read one article from the Washington Post written by a journalist whose editor is politically tied to a party and we count that article as completely factual. And so there is just not much thinking going on these days either. Just a whole lot of people running around reacting.

I get it. Sort of.

You see at the end of our block when I was 10 years old,  there was this old house that was probably built in the early 1900s. It had been condemned by the health department with a clear sign posted on the door:

DANGER KEEP OUT

BUILDING CONDEMNED

All the kids in the neighborhood had been told by their parents to not go near that house. My dad was a construction guy and he sat me down and told me about the rusty nails that would be sticking out of the floorboards, and how the front porch was unsettled to the point it could just collapse at any moment. He also seemed to be concerned that rats or some other wild animal could have taken up residence inside, as the house was nestled up against a heavily wooded area.  

At one time,  I bet this house was pretty cool. Probably the talk of the town. Two stories with a pillar supported front porch. It was about 1/2 mile from the Illinois River and sat up high enough on the hill that on a clear day you could easily see the river and likely all the way across.

But time had taken its toll on the place. We had lived in the neighborhood for 3 years and my grandparents had lived there at least 20. My grandad couldn’t remember the last time someone lived in the home. No one knew for sure who owned it. The entire place was a real mystery.

But for us kids in the neighborhood, the house was one thing… haunted.

That meant it was ripe for exploring as soon as one of us in the group mustered up enough courage to suggest we go poke around and see what might be inside. That kid was Bobby. 

Not a real leader for the group, unless it was for things that were sure to get us all in trouble, in which case Bobby was pretty good at that.

It might have been Bobby’s idea, but you really can’t blame a group of 10 year old boys for just wanting an adventure on an otherwise hot, boring summer day, can you?

What? You don’t think it is a good idea either? Well neither did my mom nor my dad.

I got two doses of lecture on that day after my mom got the call from Mr. Thompson. And then again after my dad got home and my mom told him about the phone call with Mr. Thompson. 

Boy, could my mom lecture. This one went about half an hour from what I recall, complete with volume, tone, and pitch as she explained to me the dangers of our exploration. She mentioned words like tetanus and trespassing, neither of which would have meant anything at all to me even if they were delivered without volume, tone, or pitch. In that day we had no internet so I couldn’t look up what tetanus meant, I just had to take mom’s word for it. She was the expert. What she decided was true…it was what we went with. If this lecture was a court of law, mom was both the prosecutor and the judge. Where was Bobby when I needed him?

And the verdict…Guilty! (Before I even had the chance to take the stand.)

Mr. Thompson was a truck driver who just happened to be home that day between hauls and saw us poking around. He called all our parents. Mr. Thompson was an otherwise nice guy, a bit nosey perhaps, but a nice guy.

However, in my case he was an eye witness. I was doomed. His credibility was impeccable. 

Of course, I denied it, but I have to give mom credit. As a prosecutor she was good. “Why would Mr. Thompson lie about that…why would he even care if it was not true.?”

I had no response. I thought about attacking Mr. Thompson’s character. Probably good impulse control at that point. Had I said anything at that point it would have for sure been held against me.

The penalty…grounded. Crap. Grounding was the worst.

“Mom, couldn’t you just beat me?” (This was a legitimate form of punishment 50 years ago!)

My logic was that although a beating would hurt, it would end, and then it was over. Grounding a 10-year-old boy was painful torture meant for thieves and murderers. 

Really what that meant was that I was home and in the house when dad got home. Crap. Beating and grounding. That is not fair or just. 

The thing was, from my perspective no one seemed to care about me. I swear the only thing my parents cared about is what the neighbors might think if they saw me in that old house. Or what if the police came…what then? You could get arrested. Worse yet, the neighbors would see the police in our driveway. I think mom would have rather me just be arrested.

Not to mention all the potential health risks or physical danger if something happened like the roof collapsing on me. I can still hear dad say "you know the pillars that support the weight of that roof could just collapse and then you would be crushed?”

You have to know one thing. I really love my parents. Dad has been gone almost 20 years now and I miss him a lot. What I wouldn’t give to have a lecture on how to best protect myself from the dangers that lurk around every corner. Most of the time mom and dad were actually pretty good listeners…except when they were angry or scared.

Humble Inquiry

There are a lot of people running around right now angry and scared.

People who are angry they have to come to work while the office types all work from home.

People who you had to furlough are scared because they have house payments, car payments, insurance payments, utility payments, and they had no margin in their lives even when they had full incomes. 

When people are scared or angry they can get all kinds of emotional unsettled. I really love the concept Edgar Schein wrote about a number of years ago called Humble Inquiry. If you are a regular reader you will know this book is a favorite of mine. The subtitle is what is really brilliant, “The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling.”

When people get all fired up angry or scared they stop thinking and just start reacting. As a leader, you need good impulse control not to react back at them in the moment.  What I coach leaders to do in this instance is to practice some Humble Inquiry.  

Here are some thoughts on how to do this:

1. Minimize your own preconceptions. You are about to get curious about someone who is scared. Clear your mind and shift from judging to observing. 

2. Keep your questions for them open-ended. You want to explore with the scared person what is it that is really scaring them. 

3. Practice giving up control of the conversation. You are not trying to lead them anywhere specific. You are there to just help them process what they are experiencing.

What might it be like if we all just got a little more curious about where folks are coming from these days? They may not ever tell you the real reason they are scared, but they will remember you as an excellent listener.

That One Thing That Seems to Be Missing From Your Backpack

Yesterday I hosted a Facebook Watch Party and had a really great time interviewing Dr. Tim Gardner, author of the book The Backpack. If you missed that video on Facebook, you can click here and take a peek. Tim and I had a really cool discussion about how leaders can improve their self-awareness.

The Backpack is a book about how self-aware you are when you interact with others. I think most of us see self-awareness from the perspective of how we see ourselves. But this really misses the point about what the construct of self-awareness is all about.

The thing that people seem to get wrong about self-awareness is not how you see yourself, but rather how others are experiencing you!

Think about that statement for a minute.

When is the last time you walked away from a meeting and thought, “I wonder how that person just experienced me?”

A Story About Self-awareness

I had a coaching client years ago who led a sales and marketing organization. Really bright guy. Very strategic and an excellent implementer as well. He was articulate and fun. People on his team and his peers really appreciated the value he brought to the organization. In fact, I remember a quote from his interview 360 that I did, “…he makes us all better by being on the team.”  I mean, who among us doesn’t want something like that said about us?

But there was one thing about him that almost every one of his peers made a comment on when I interviewed them. A self-awareness thing, really. Some of his peers called it a “lack of executive presence.”

When his team was making a presentation to a more senior leader, and that senior leader would ask a controversial question or see the situation differently than the team was presenting, he would acquiesce to the leader. When I probed his peers on this, none of them could really give me a time where he put a stick in the ground to move the idea forward. 

When he and I read the 360, his rationale (his level of self-awareness) was that this was intentional on his part. He told me he was very aware of this and his strategy was to listen to the senior leader and then come back another day to advance his cause.  

Seemed logical.

Except this is not how other people were experiencing this behavior. What he saw as a strategic strength, others experienced as conflict avoidance. 

In this little example, the leader was very self-aware and even intentional with his action to the point he saw it as a strategic advantage. The point about self-awareness is not only is it how aware you are of how you are showing up but how aware are you of how others are experiencing you.

THREE STEPS TO BE MORE SELF-AWARE

1. Slow Down Your Routine
   
   Routines make things we used to have to think about become unconscious. This distinction is what Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, describes as making System 1 thinking become System 2. System 1 thinking is that automatic unconscious thinking we all do that makes things routine. It is your gut feeling. It is how you have successfully shown up in the past. In the above story, it is the guy seeing conflict as living to fight another day. System 2 thinking is being conscious of what we are doing. It is taking your “gut” feelings and putting some rational thought behind them. It is slowing down enough to notice not only how you are showing up but also being able to realize how others are experiencing you.
   

2. Challenge Your Status Quo
   
   Are the behaviors that have made you successful in the past going to get you where you want to be in the future? Mix it up a bit and learn. This will give you new insights and recognitions, helping you to slow down and think more about what you are doing. As you are ending a meeting or a conversation with someone, become more cognizant of how you are ending. Research shows us that how we begin and how we finish interactions with people tend to be how they remember us. As you begin your meeting with the person, remind yourself to do more listening rather than talking. Or perhaps end your next meeting with a conscious smile, leaving them with a positive feeling about being with you.
   

3. Find a Friend/Coach/Mentor
   
   We all need feedback. To ensure that you understand how people are experiencing you, ask them. Having a true friend, coach, or mentor who will really tell you the way it is can be a great place to get helpful feedback. Not that person who always takes your side or tells you what you want to hear. You need someone who can help you move from seeing to recognizing, then help you experiment with new behaviors so that you know what to practice.

My hope for you is a leader is that you become more self-aware so that you can have an inspirational impact on those you lead.

EXERCISE FOR SKILL ENHANCEMENT

Here is an exercise I have used with my clients from time to time to create more self-awareness. To do this you will need a blank sheet of paper and a pen or pencil.  

Divide the page into the following five columns: Stop, Do Less, Continue, Do More, Start.  

In each column write down one thing that you want to do to work on your self-awareness.

Next, identify one thing others have given you feedback on the past that you want to be more aware of. As an example, think about the person I described above who always would acquiesce to the leader. I have put an example in the chart below on this so you get an idea of how it might work for you.

10 Things Great Teachers Might Say About Our Current Situation

I have to admit to you that I have really been conflicted during this current COVID 19 crisis. My conflict really pulls on me because of two very strong values that I hold:

1. Human Health

2. Maximizing Wealth

Many of you know that many years ago I chose a career change. Before entering the world of leadership development, I spent many years in healthcare. My undergraduate work was in pharmacy, and after passing the state boards in Illinois, I went to work for Family Drug Stores in Decatur, Illinois. I worked as a retail pharmacist and a Long Term Care consultant. I really enjoyed those days of listening to people and helping them use medicine to live healthy and productive lives. So, modern western medicine means a lot to me. It has shaped many of my core values.

These health care values really drive my paying attention to what medical experts have to say., such as listening to epidemiologists talk about how to “flatten the curve” for Coronavirus. I check the news every evening to get more information on both a vaccine against Coronavirus and a treatment for COVID 19. Actions such as social distancing and wearing a mask make total sense to me as ways we can help to save lives and not overburden our health care system.  All of these align with my value for proper societal health care.

All of this is in total conflict with another value of mine; maximization of wealth. 

I love it when people work hard and are rewarded for it. I celebrate people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. They had an idea, took a risk, worked hard, and have made a pile of cash. Good for them. (I also have a strong value for giving back and I trust these three have done that the right way). Hard work and ingenuity are the engines of capitalism and I strongly applaud these. If you are working hard, have an idea, take a risk to implement your idea, then I will celebrate you too. Your wealth creation and generosity are two things that can really help you to live a meaningful life. 

Current Crisis

I think it is pretty easy for you to see the conflict I am feeling. Perhaps you share these values and are experiencing similar feelings. On the one hand, we have to be concerned about our health. We have to not only be self-referential but we have to care about those who might be at greater risk than we are. And this current health crisis has put 30 million people in the United States alone out of work. Many of them in the travel, entertainment, and food service industries which hit my hometown of Orlando really hard. 

Where do you turn when you have a values conflict? How do you resolve issues like the one I am experiencing?

My experience is that far too many of us turn to our emotions to guide what we are experiencing. The problem with this is that our emotions are meant more to be a thermometer than a thermostat. Emotion is to inform you so you can make a decision to act. We can get into a lot of trouble if we allow our emotions to have too much input into the decisions we make.

In addition to what I am thinking myself, I like to turn to others to see if there is anything I can learn from them to help me resolve my conflict. I have learned a lot from many of you who read this blog over the years, so turning to friends and colleagues is one place I seek information. 

From time to time I also like to turn to the great thinkers of the world to see if I can glean any wisdom from what they have written in the past. Not about Coronavirus, of course, but more in general about learning in crisis. 

With that, I present you with 10 quotes from some of the greatest teachers from philosophy, religion, and psychology. I thought it might be kind of interesting to get some 30,000 foot perspective on learning from crisis. 

It has struck me that all the misfortunes of men spring from the single cause that they are unable to stay quietly in one room. ~ Pascal

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The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. ~ Aristotle

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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. ~ Bertrand Russell

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Who among you can add one day to his life by worrying? ~ Jesus of Nazareth

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Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana

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Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as his successes. ~ John Dewey

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The mind is the effect, not the cause. ~ Daniel Dennett

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To understand is to perceive patterns. ~ Isaiah Berlin

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Hope and fear cannot alter the season. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
~ William James

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And if I might include one more (consider it a bonus) from a modern-day philosopher on investing and human behavior:

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a nights sleep for the chance of extra profits.
~ Warren Buffett

At the end of our current crisis, I think it might be the philosophers who have the most to say about the conflict in values I am experiencing.

Are you experiencing any similar conflicts? If so, let me know, I would love to hear more about your story.

You Need This More Than Toilet Paper During The COVID Crisis

The famous UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden, has been quoted as saying, “Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who will argue with you.”

What kind of impulse control does it take as a leader to not only surround yourself with smart people but to listen to them even when they don’t agree with you?

I think in life it would be so much easier to surround myself with smart people who think just like I do. Life would roll along and I would seemingly have a lot fewer problems. Except then as life rolls along, I would not get a very clear picture of reality.

 If I am honest, in many organizations I have the chance to study and observe the following:

• Hire really smart people

• Spend a lot of money training them on skills and the culture of the organization

• Then they tell them HOW they want things done, instead of WHAT it is they are to do

• When the person does not do exactly like the person in power mandates, we claim they are just a poor fit

• The employee comes to us with a different idea or a different perspective that flies in the face of what we think, and then that really smart person we hired initially, all of a sudden has become clueless.

• Then we ask this person to leave or we put them in a job where we don’t have to hear them nearly as often.

True wisdom is about managing your emotions so that you are able to listen more intently to understand where this smart person you hired is really coming from.

In no way am I advocating that you have to listen to these smart people and then automatically align yourself with their perspective so that everyone feels good.

No!

However, listening to other perspectives is a core component necessary to make wise decisions.

Wisdom In Leadership

I would argue, and have in many other writings, that wisdom is a central and yet often ignored element in leadership. Effective leadership behavior fundamentally depends upon a leader’s ability to solve complex social problems.

It is not hard to argue that the complexity that exists because of this global pandemic is causing massive social problems. You can find a list of those social issues in any newspaper or internet article since March 15, 2020. so I am not going to spend time listing them here. Some of them are quite serious and deal with actual issues of life and death. Others are much more trivial, such as my local Publix being consistently out of toilet paper when I go shopping. 

I am not much of a philosopher and do not have any formal training in the discipline. That stated I think history is going to really look back on this current crisis, along with our ability to solve some really complex social problems and ask, “Where was Wisdom?”

I know I am not the first to write it, but, toilet paper…please. If we can not figure out with our advanced supply chain knowledge how to get basic things like toilet paper, where are we really as a society?

As you contemplate this for yourself, do not fret nor feel too much shame. The question has really been asked since the beginning of time. All people whether ancient or civilized have wrestled with this idea of wisdom.

• The ancient Sumerians, whose writings served as the foundation of both Greek and Roman cultures asked this kind of question.

• Early Egyptian writings which were the precursors to the Hebrew writings that make up the Old Testament in the Bible lamented about wisdom.

• In the Old Testament, the most famous wisdom book might be the Book of Proverbs which laments; “Some people laugh about wise words. A person like that does not love someone saying, ‘You are doing wrong things’. (S)he will not go to wise people (Proverbs 15:12, Easy English Version).

• Of course, the ancient Greeks were known as lovers of wisdom:

• Socrates “…if he was the wisest person, it was because he did not think he knew that which he did not know."

• Plato. According to Plato scholars, he saw the true mark of wisdom as “the very character of the person as it was revealed by the person’s deliberate choices and dispositions"

• Aristotle saw the mark of wisdom as prudence; The very character of the person as revealed through individual choice and disposition.

• Saint Augustine was the first to blend the practical prudence of the ancients with the belief of and obedience to an all-powerful, all-knowing God.  Augustine argued we must vigorously desire wisdom to obtain it. He was passionate about the hope in the possibility of obtaining wisdom and that our desire for it must be found in faith in God.

• More modern-day researchers have defined wisdom as “a special kind of real-life process that is accomplished after a person cognitively makes an unusual integration, embodies his or her ideas through action, and hence brings forth positive effects to both self and others.”  

Wisdom Calls

As a leader during these difficult days, can you hear wisdom calling you? She is! (Most texts give wisdom a female persona).

Can you hear her? What is she saying to you as a leader in your organization? Are you taking the time to listen?

I love the imagery in the ancient book of Proverbs where Wisdom takes on human character and is seen in the street calling out, “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” (Proverbs 1:20-22).

The call to wisdom implies the capability to be able to implement right judgments in life. This wisdom calling has actually been studied for as long difficult decisions have existed.

It is my hope for you as you make difficult decisions during these days that you will indeed be wise. That you will listen to too advisors. That you will delay your impulses. That you will stop and think. That you will be compassionate and to not think of yourself as better than others.

I will be talking more about this idea of wisdom in my Facebook live event on Thursday of this week at noon eastern time. I hope you can join me. If not, there will be a recording available for you to watch when you have time.

In addition, I put together this tool to help you think about some core fundamental elements of wisdom. Feel free to download it. There is no cost. I hope it helps you in your organization and in your life to make wise decisions.

Unprecedented...Really?

I noticed something about the conversations I was having with my clients last week. I was repeatedly using a word that, until recent weeks, I don’t think I used all that much.

Unprecedented. 

The word means “never done or known before.”

On one hand, there are a lot of specific things I am experiencing for the first time. 

For example:

• This is the first global pandemic I have been through in my lifetime

• According to the Wall Street Journal on April 16, 2020, over 22 million people sought unemployment benefits

• People are wearing masks at the grocery store

• It is hard to purchase paper towels and toilet paper

• A drop of 2997 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average

• I can’t fly to Peoria and have coffee with my mom at her kitchen table

• I can’t fly to Ohio and hug my two grandbabies! 

All of these seemingly unprecedented events were starting to cause me some stress. I could feel it all building. As I would think about the pandemic and the many people dying, I get a little stressed because I don’t want to get sick and die. I go to the grocery store and see all the people wearing masks and I can not buy paper towels and I get a little stressed.  When I read the news at night, half of the stock market pundits say the market is going to recover and the other half say it is going back down. This uncertainty adds stress.  I can see my two precious granddaughters on FaceTime, but I cannot hug them…wanna talk about stress?!

Pretty soon, I can feel all of this stress adding up. I can actually start to feel the weight of it all. I think it is starting to affect my mental game, my positive attitude, my overall optimism.

Then it hit me like a blinding flash of light, what I know about stress is killing me.

That last statement might seem a little odd, but hang with me. I want to unpack it with you.

Henry Thompson, in his book, The Stress Effect, draws this conclusion, “When stress increases, cognitive and emotional intelligence are compromised. Perception changes and, in many cases, become less accurate and more biased.”  When complexity increases and our control decreases we do not see things as they really are and we mentally run to our familiar comfort zones.

And if that is not enough the Mayo Clinic cites body, mood, and behavioral effects like headache, anxiety, and overeating, along with stomach upset, feeling overwhelmed, and exercising less.

Like you, the last two paragraphs were not new information for me. I know that stress affects my decision making and I know it makes me anxious and causes me to feel overwhelmed at times. I also know that if I let myself slip, I will take on other unhealthy behaviors like overeating and sleep difficulties. 

What I know about stress is indeed killing me.

As I was feeling the weight of all this stress, I came to realize that I needed a very different response. So, in my journaling this morning, I spent some time just writing and trying to figure out all this seemingly unprecedented stuff, and the stress it was causing me.

Out of nowhere, another blinding flash of light: is this event that we are experiencing really unprecedented?

Just Hear Me Out

At first glance when thinking about the impact of Covid-19, there might be an argument for describing it with the word “unprecedented.”

I don’t ever remember not being able to go out and have dinner in a restaurant. Certainly, that has never happened before in my life. From my very first memories as a kid growing up I could go into Steak and Shake with my Aunt Betty and order a fried egg sandwich on white bread and those classic french fries.

But as I was thinking about this micro event of dining in at Steak and Shake back in the 1960’s, it really isn’t the dining in the restaurant, but more about my ability to have control to do what I want, when I want.

Yet none of us always gets to do what we want, when we want.

Is this unprecedented feeling I am having really all that unprecedented? Or is it a lack of control I am experiencing in the moment?

I have been pretty open in this column, and in my conversations with my clients, and even on the Facebook Watch Parties (sign up for my next one here) I have been hosting about how I am starting my day. In fact, just yesterday I was on a coaching call and a client said to me, “So, Scott, tell me how you are starting your day?”

Here is what I told him:

• I am walking the dog

• I am exercising

• I am having coffee and reading my Bible 

• I am spending some time in quiet reflection and meditation

• I then go into my office and start working

Then I told him I am really digging this routine. One thing I did have to change was looking at the news. I open the Newsfeed on my iPhone and skim the headlines to see if there is something new or breakthrough that happened overnight. Then I close the app.  I don’t want to infect my day with a bunch of news I already know is bad.

Why am I telling you all this, you might be asking?

The Point

Today I am in my morning routine and reading my Bible and one of the verses in the study I am doing is Ecclesiastes 1:9 which reads, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

I really had to stop dead in my tracks.

How could something be unprecedented and yet there be nothing new under the sun?

While the microcosm of what we are all experiencing right now might be new, the lack of control we are experiencing certainly is not.

The inability to control our situations or our circumstances is not new. For centuries, people have had to adapt and change because of what is going on around them. And for centuries, these events have been stressful.

What I am asking myself is, “Do I have to succumb to the stress of the situation?” 

What I know about stress is killing me, and if I don’t change something, the stress just might do me in.  

I will have a free tool for you to download after my Facebook WatchParty event this Thursday at noon Eastern time.  I hope you will be able to join me!  I have a very special guest who will join me to help us continue this discussion around stress. See you Thursday!

5 Strategies to Be Resilient in Stressful Times

I don’t know about you, but this last week was a tough one for me. Not hard in a physical way, but more just feeling the weight of what is going on in our world.

Anytime I go through a tough time in my life I am always looking for lessons that I can learn.  I really think it is during the tough times in life that we can learn the most about what we need to do to live in wisdom.  Last week I wrote quite a bit on the subject of Fear and Wisdom. If you missed it, you can grab that blog by clicking here.  I also did a free tool download to help you make wise choices in your life and if you missed that tool you can click here for the free download. 

One of those tough lessons for me happened early in my college career. But I have to give you a little historical context for it to make sense. 

In high school, I loved chemistry. I really think it was a combination of my teacher, Mr. Valosio, and being able to have a Bunson Burner to play with during the labs. Chemistry just sort of made sense to me for some odd reason. It was fun because all the known elements in the universe were pictured on a poster behind where Mr. Valosio taught. All you had to do was combine two or more of them and “Bam” you had something like water. Combining Carbon and Hydrogen gave way to the very backbone of all life.  Again, I know I am weird, but I just got into it.  

Hence, like almost anything you enjoy spending time doing, you tend to do pretty well at it. My high school chemistry grades were always pretty good. Just to be clear, my grades in other subjects were not always as good as chemistry, which I think puzzled the guidance counselor when I was making applications to college. She could be puzzled, I really didn’t care, I just liked chemistry.

So when I went off to college and was in Chemistry 101, the lectures were really quite boring. I had already learned everything the professor was talking about, so I decided that attendance at that 8 am class every Monday thru Friday was…well…optional. No one took attendance. There were 400 kids in the lecture hall. I already knew everything they were talking about, so I decided an extra hour's sleep never hurt anyone.

The first test came around about 3 weeks or so into the semester.  I went to class that day to take the test.   

You couldn’t tell by the grade I got — a “D.”

Mr. Valosio would have been so disappointed in me. I was so disappointed in myself. I loved chemistry. How could this happen?

Part of the deal in Chemistry 101 was if you did not get an “A” on the first test, you had to make an appointment with your lab instructor to go over the exam. So I did. 

I walked into Professor Brown’s lab and showed her my test. It was embarrassing for me. Her first question for me cut right to the point.  “How much did you study for this test,” she asked?  

“I didn’t” was my honest reply. I proceeded to tell her I had all this stuff in high school and I already knew it…Her second statement cut right to the point, “Obviously you don’t know it” she said.  “I recommend you find some discipline in your life, Mr. Livingston, or you might just find yourself not a part of the Drake Pharmacy program much longer.”

Some very well-timed words from professor Brown. Quite a stressful moment for me in my young college career.  But one I learned from.

5 Strategies for Being Resilient in Stressful Times

I think anytime we go through something difficult, it is all about learning. In order to learn, we have to develop some resiliency.  As I reflect on the conversation I had with Professor Brown back then, it would have been easy for me to just quit. Pharmacy was a difficult major. No one would have blamed me and I am sure I could have done something that would not have required an 8am class every day of the week (which I had, by the way, for every semester except one my entire college career).

I know things are tough for you right now.  Tough maybe not physically, but for sure emotionally. Everyone is experiencing this COVID 19 in a unique way.  So I thought perhaps some strategies might be useful as you navigate these difficult times.

1. Reframe the context. Most of us are sheltering in place these days. Instead of a burden and feeling the heaviness of being at home, why not make the most of it? My wife and I are taking the opportunity in the evenings to connect with some old friends over FaceTime.  I have one client whose family cooked dinner together over Zoom. They all had the same ingredients for the meal and they talked to each other while they cooked, then ate dinner together.

2. Choose your focus.  I am really trying to limit the amount of time I am looking at the news. I am addicted to the story; the epidemiology, the race for a vaccine, the updates on treatments, how it spreads, the whole thing. What I have to do is choose to only look at the news once a day. I do this in the evening after I finish working. I choose to start my day reading scripture and listening to an inspirational or informative podcast. I want to be in the right frame of mind when I start working.

3. Find the good.  There is a lot of seriousness these days. People are dying. People have lost their jobs. Businesses are going under, some to never return. A lot of seriousness. But just because something is serious doesn’t mean we cannot find the good. I am not saying there is something good about someone getting sick or dying. I don’t want you to think I am that dark or so optimistic that I don’t live in the real world. What I am asking you to consider here is whether in the midst of all of this, is there something good?  I had a client tell me the other day that he no longer has a 1.5hr commute, so after work, he and his 10-year-old daughter are going for a walk. Now that is a commute that has value!  How can you find the good in what is happening in your world?

4. Helping or Harming? Consider your thought life.  Are my thoughts and emotions helping me or harming me right now?  I was reading the news the other day I started to get a bit anxious about the impact that COVID 19 might have on my business. What if my clients started to close? What if there was not enough business when things returned? None of that thinking was helping me. So I sat down and wrote out a one-page plan on what I need to do to stay engaged with my clients. If you really are in danger, it is helpful to be afraid. If you are really not in danger, then a plan is a much better idea.

5. Make stress your friend.  We all have stress. If you are feeling it, then it is trying to communicate something to you.  If you are feeling cooped up and it is stressing you out, then go outside for a walk. I know its raining, who cares, take an umbrella. If you are feeling lonely, like most of us are these days, then pick up the phone and call a friend. You have friends. If you don’t have a friend, pick up the phone and call me. My point here is that your stress is telling you something. Look it straight in the eye and do something productive and positive that will help to make it go down. 

You don’t have to do all 5 of these. This is not a list of steps to walk through. If you are feeling stressed, pick the one you think might be the most helpful.

I picked up the phone after my meeting with Professor Brown and called Mr. Volosio. He talked some sense into me. I thank him to this day for helping me in my time of need and for graduating from pharmacy school. 

Next Steps

If you are interested in learning more about these 5 strategies, I’d like to extend an invitation to participate in a (4) session development opportunity, facilitated by me, utilizing Facebook’s video streaming platform. I guarantee there will be no sales pitch or advertising - just content. You can join one of them or all of them, as each session is independent of the others. Join as many as you would like. I would love to have you!

All you need in order to participate is a Facebook account (free to create if you don’t already have one) and a desire to connect and learn. Over the 4 weeks, I plan to cover topics such as:

•  “5 Strategies for Staying Resilient During Times of Ambiguous Change”  

• “What You Know About Stress is Killing You” 

• “Making Wise Decisions in Scary Circumstances”

• “Leading with Emotional Intelligence When Stress is High”

To begin, simply CLICK HERE and request to join my private Facebook group. All content will be facilitated within this group each Thursday at 12pm Eastern Time for 4 weeks, beginning Thursday, April 16th and ending Thursday, May 7th. 

If you know of a leader who might benefit from this opportunity, feel free to forward them this email. I would love to connect!

Is it Fear or Wisdom?

To say there is a lot going on in our world right now is likely the understatement of the year!

I find myself going from big picture, what is happening across the world with Coronavirus, to the minutia of checking my bank account daily to make sure I have the funds I need to pay my staff and business partners.

Thoughts like:

• Will this be over and will folks be back to work by the end of April? If so, I think I have the resources to weather that storm. The fact is, I have more than enough to make it through April, so should I be generous to others who are really struggling. 

• If this current crisis goes through May, my retained earnings should be enough to carry me through, but maybe I should back off my generosity a bit.

• If my business is not as interrupted as others, what should my response be?

• If my business tanks because of Coronavirus, how should I respond?

• Is this an opportunity to launch into some new areas of work I have always thought about but never really had the time to focus on?

I am sure you are evaluating your work, and, for that matter, your personal life as well.  

• Some of you have fallen in love with working from home and are trying to think of ways to approach your boss to lobby for a more permanent home office deal.

• Some of you can’t wait to get back to the socialization of your team; this working from home is driving you crazy.

• Some of you thought your house was maybe too big for the number of people who now live there, only to find your college kids all came home and now you actually could double your square footage and still be cramped.

• Some of you had been thinking about giving up your gym membership to save money only to realize you would now pay double just to go workout with a coach.

• Some of you have learned to order your groceries online and just drive up to have someone load them in your car.

One thing is for sure, Coronavirus will cause many of us to rethink portions of our lives, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

As we rethink our personal and business lives let’s make sure we are doing it with wisdom and not out of fear.

What is it that you are afraid of? If I do not have any retained earnings in my business and if I am not getting any new work, then I should be afraid that my business might not make it. That is legitimate fear. Those are the facts.

How This works with Leaders

When I am coaching clients and we are trying to discern whether something is wise or not we always look at the facts. 

• Not what I emotionally want the facts to be. 

• Not the longing desires of my heart.

• Not what it would take to please the person I am trying to impress.

• Not irrational propaganda or rumors I might have heard.

No! What are the facts?

When I ask the question “What are you afraid of?” I get back answers like:

• I don’t know

• I am not really sure

• That _________ could happen if the stars align exactly right across every galaxy in the universe.

That is when I know we are dealing with a fear or an anxiety that is not going to help us make a wise decision.

As I am thinking about my own business and how I am going make it to the other side of Coronavirus, I am looking at how long I can pay everyone and what kind of new business I can bring in. I am putting those numbers in a spreadsheet, just like I always have, and I am pulling out my journal and I am reflecting on what those numbers are telling me. 

If my fear is an overarching, overwhelming sense that the world is collapsing, that is not helping me. We need to make decisions not on what I emotionally project might happen, but what the facts are telling me. I have developed a flow chart - if this happens, I will do A. If that happens, I will do B. The decision is already made and is informed by the facts of the situation. 

What I am trying to communicate here is if you are trying to discern between fear and wisdom, the facts of the situation are your friend.

Here is a little checklist you can use to discern if your decision is full of wisdom or full of fear. If you use this list you will most always end up with a decision that is much more wise than it is fearful. I used this model years ago when I wrote my dissertation on wisdom and am so thankful for Dr. Vern Ludden who conceptualized it way back in 2009.

• Start with what you THINK the facts are

• Think CRITICALLY about the facts

• How do these facts AUTHENTICALLY align with your character?

• What have been your past EXPERIENCES with these facts?

• As you REFLECT on these experiences, what are the facts telling you?

• Do you have the COURAGE to put the facts into action?

• Have you pressure tested the facts with a larger COMMUNITY of advisors?

• What did the above DELIBERATIONS tell you about the facts?

• As you COLLABORATE with others do you get a positive impression about the facts?

• Some of you who bring SPIRITUALITY into your fact discernment will call upon God to show you direction

Now you are ready to EVALUATE what you THINK the facts are.

Using an informed process like the one I outlined above can help you decide if you are using wisdom in your decision making, or if you are subjecting yourself to irrational fear or anxiety.

I wish you and your family all the best as you navigate this current crisis.

Every Leader Needs to Acknowledge This One Thing Right Now

I LOVE MY TEAM’S AMYGDALA!

Let me explain why...

These are for sure some crazy times we are living in. I just spoke to my neighbor, Bill, who is almost 80 years old at the mailbox. “I have never witnessed anything like this in my life,” Bill told me.

Then I called my mom, who is 83, and asked her, “Mom have you ever experienced anything like this in your life?”  “No, I do remember your Aunt Betty telling stories of when she was a baby (Aunt Betty would be 98 this year if she was still with us) of being quarantined with your Grandmother because she had developed a case of Scarlet Fever.”

So, unprecedented for sure. And full of emotion for all of us and the people we lead on our teams.

My daddy always told me there are 3 situations where I needed to be really careful when making decisions:

1. When I had been drinking. 

2. When I was in a heightened emotional state.

3. After a significant loss.

I think the first one is self-explanatory, except on occasion I will get a call from a client who has said something or done something or punched something when too much alcohol was involved. I have witnessed first hand at least 5 people lose good careers over too much wine or whiskey at a company dinner. 

Now, on the heightened emotional state, I am pretty sure this was a warning from my daddy about being with a girl. However, with the current state of affairs in our world, are we not in a heightened emotional state? Fear and panic have gripped our society. 

I was listening to a podcast of Dave Ramsey the other day. For those of you who do not know Dave, he is famous for helping people get out of debt so they can lead generous and giving lives.  A lady called in who was 67 years old, along with her 70 year old husband. They were frightened by the “crashing” of the stock market and sold everything they had invested. Please try to resist judging these souls. I am sure we all have opinions about if they should be in the market, or if they should have sold or not. Fine, you can have your opinion, but I was stunned by the emotion and lack of logical, rational thinking that had overcome them.

Fear and panic will cause all of us to do things we normally would not do.

Here is a short video where I explain, in very simple terms what happens in your brain when this is going on.

The final situation we leaders need to recognize are times of significant loss.  

In my younger days I used to do some counseling type work at the church we went to. Often times we would be called to provide support to someone who had just experienced the loss of a spouse or loved one.  In our training, we learned to listen to them and help them unpack their feelings. In addition, we were to encourage them to not make any significant decisions for about a year. People need time to grieve the loss and they need time to process what has happened to them. We tried to help them form a plan for moving forward day to day without making any big decisions that would be life-changing. 

You may know some people who have experienced a significant loss right now. Many of us know people who just 3 short weeks ago had vibrant careers but are now being laid off or furloughed. With that in mind, I wanted to give you some ideas to help you connect with the emotional moments we are all experiencing.

3 Strategies To Love Your Teams Amygdala

1. Find ways to reduce or eliminate unneeded stressors. You may have someone who needs to go comfort a spouse who just lost a job very unexpectedly, and your policy doesn’t allow for something like this.  It is time to put relationships and people ahead of policy. Or someone might be working from home and their internet speed isn’t high enough for quality HD video. This is not the time to call them out and create stress because of petty items. 

2. Choose leadership strategies that engage the Neo-Cortex. Remember the Amygdala is the strategic inflection point if good, creative, and reflective thinking is occurring, or if the person is going to be in Fight/Flight/Freeze mode. Here are some ways to help engage the thinking part of the brain:

   1. Tell Stories - Rather than give orders or lists for people to do, engage them in a story and remind them of how their task is helping the organization or the customer during times like this. Stories calm people down, help them think about the characters, and engages their personal creativity.

   2. Be Optimistic - Optimism is not pollyannaish, it is being hopeful for the future. We all know this virus is going to be short-term. In 10 years we will look back and likely be critical of many things we did in the moment. Help your team have hope for the future. We are all going to ride on airplanes again, and stay in hotels, and go on vacation again. Sure, there might be some short-term adjustments for all of us, but the future is bright for your company. You are in a storm right now, but storms do not last forever.

   3. Express Gratitude - At the beginning of every day let’s thank people for being on our team. And make it the last thing we do at night. Thank them for coming to work (even online). Tell them how important they are to the organization.  How much you appreciate them.  Gratitude that is real and heartfelt calms things down and helps people pull through tough times.

3. Give Them A Plan. A few years ago, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Tim Gardner, and I wrote a one-day training called: What You Know About Stress Is Killing You. (The title is meant to be cute and is not a typo). One of the most important things you can do as a leader right now is to sit down one on one (social distancing rules apply) and help them identify places they are stressed and to help them write a plan that would alleviate the stress.  Once it is written down, they can cognitively focus on what to do. Sure, it might feel a little directive, and it is!  If they are stressed and the amygdala is preventing clear thinking then a written plan to follow is just what the doctor would order.

It is my hope that these strategies might be useful to you. If you are a leader of leaders, why not sit down with your team and go over this list? Talk about how they can help their team perform under such trying and difficult times.  

If I can help, please do no hesitate to call or write.  If you think a workshop on emotional intelligence or stress would be helpful for your team, I would be happy to do this for you. We can do it online in a day or take an hour each day, whatever might work best for your team structure.

Best Hopes,

Scott

The Paradox Parable of the Called Leader

Once upon a time right around now, in an organization not far from here, sits Hero, the leader of the whole thing. She is not having a very good day, although both the quantitative and qualitative metrics upon which her performance are measured look good. No, let's not fool ourselves, the numbers are actually great. Hero is in her element. She loves her role and she is really good at it. She has found her niche in life. Some of the articles she read recently in Scholarly Organization Journal would say Hero has found her calling. 

By all accounts, Hero should be having a very good day. Indeed this should be a very, very good day. 

She has a late meeting with an influential member of the board of directors, Distance. Distance oversees the selection, compensation, and retention of the executive team. The relationship Hero has with Distance is a good one, even though Hero has never felt like the relationship was that close. In fact, Hero has only ever met with Distance in board meetings and on executive retreats. She was really looking forward to finally meeting one-on-one with Distance and aligning goals for the upcoming year.

Yes, it really, really should have been a good day. 

Hero, even started her morning with 15 minutes of quiet reflection using her favorite bible verse as the focus of her morning contemplation. She turned in her bible to Proverbs 3:5-6 which reads “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.”  Because of the complexity of her organization, Hero often finds herself turning to her spiritual connections for wisdom in decision-making.  Since she often feels the magnitude of hundreds of people whose lives are impacted by her decisions, connecting with her spiritual nature helps her to realize that she is not the center of the universe. Hero remembers attending a conference where she heard a speaker* say, "Humility is like a sock with a hole in it, it's realizing what is not there that really matters."

As Hero sat in quiet contemplation what really jumped out at her in this morning's reading was the instruction not to lean on her own understanding. This was quite a puzzling paradox. The instruction seems to say that Hero should not put her trust in or be supported by the structures of all that she had learned over the course of her 50 some odd years on earth. 

As Hero focused her attention on these words “lean not on your own understanding” her mind started to drift….

          I have always felt my business and my life are solid. My marriage of 30 years to Loveofmylife is rock solid. As for the workplace, I  have been complemented by Boardchair that I show excellent critical thinking and a strong ability to discern between very viable, but distinctly different options when a decision is needed.  My experiences have been formed from a very good academic pedigree that lead to an excellent job right out of school. Each opportunity I have been given in life seemed to build perfectly as a jumping off point for my next career opportunity.  I really can’t believe it, here I sit three years into this leadership role really trying to fully appreciate what I have accomplished…no that's not right, why do I always do that? It is what the team has accomplished. If it wasn’t for their hard work and dedication to the mission we would be nowhere. 

As she sat and stared at her journal where she keeps these reflective thoughts she got an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and appreciation for who she is and what she has been able to accomplish.

Then Hero remembered the words of her Coach who told her that when journaling, if her mind wanders, she should come back to the thought she was reflecting on, Lean not on your own understanding.  She even remembered proper meditation technique. A good day, are you kidding? 

Yes, this really should have been one of those.

Now time doesn’t allow us to tell you in any detail about the excellent workout that Hero had that morning, nor the healthy breakfast she enjoyed (perfectly balanced between carbs and proteins). We just really don’t have the space to discuss her commute to work where it seemed like she was the only person on the road, and not one car pulled in front of her to cut her off. Not one. When does that ever happen?

We wish there was time to tell you about all the productive meetings Hero had that day, the 20-minute nap she enjoyed in the afternoon, and the very productive afternoon session she had with her Coach. Time and space just don’t allow. Sorry. But all that aside...

Really and truly this should have been a perfect game of a day.

Oh yeah, Hero got in a 45 minute Hot Yoga class before her meeting with Distance. 

Good Day? Ha. 

And yet, to quote from one of Hero's favorite childhood books,

 “This is an awful, no good, very bad day.” 

You see, Hero had her late meeting with Distance, who told Hero her services were no longer needed by the organization. The board wanted to go a different direction. Sure there was certainly acknowledgment of all her positive results. Distance thanked her for all her effort. But in the end, the board decided they needed a new focus and direction (it is highly recommended, that if this was a real organization, who had a real board who made decisions like this, and who issued real stock; that you sell as fast as you can.)

Distance said the announcement would be made in 2 weeks and that they would like to throw a party for Hero. Yes, you read that right, the board fired Hero and wanted to celebrate it.  "Who does that? “Hero asked her Coach when she called to provide the update on her meeting with Distance, 

Indeed, this was not a good day. 

"But one day does not a life make. Nor does what happens on any single day ever define us. It can have an impact for sure, but is in no way a full picture of who we are". —Coach

Now if Coaches are good at one thing, they are good at asking the right question at the right time. They are not very good at providing quotes to be used in a blog post.

Hero’s Coach sat with her in silence as Hero contemplated this day that should have been so good and yet felt not that way at all.

“It's not if something bad might happen in your life but when." Those are the words Hero spoke that broke the silence that enveloped the coaching session (they are also words that will end up some day in a blog post, quoted by Coach.) “The real question to be answered is, How am I going to respond?”  Coach knew what Hero was saying, that leaders are often defined by their resilience in the face of setbacks. Having a positive optimistic long term outlook is what trust is all about.

And now you know why she is my Hero.

*This quote is from Dr. Jay Wood, author of Virtue Epistemology, taken from a lecture at Indiana Wesleyan University. Hero hopes she heard this as the speaker intended.

5 Tips Based on 15 Years of Working from Home

We are all entering some very interesting times as knowledge workers. The Coronavirus pandemic is causing many of us to rethink assumptions we never thought we would have to consider.  As a result, many of you who have maybe worked a day or two from home now and then might find yourself working from home for the next several weeks.

This is especially true as schools decide to move to online formats and are requiring students to stay home, forcing many workers into new scenarios that they have never faced before when it comes to working remotely.

There is some good news in this. A Harvard study in 2019 stated that people who can work from when they choose were 4.4% more productive than those who had fixed, rigid work requirements.  I actually was a bit shocked and thought this might be higher, but my fear is that not everyone who does choose where they work from follows the same discipline they would in an office environment. 

So, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on how I have navigated these “free to choose your workspace” waters for myself (although for some this may be a forced free choice).  

These are not based on any research. I will typically spend several hours researching and crafting a blog post, but this post is different. It is just my opinion.  What I write may not fit you or your style, and that’s okay.

1. Guard Your Attitude Against Loneliness.  I am starting with attitude because many of you really enjoy the social aspect of work.  If you had a question about something you were used to popping your head in someone’s office to get an answer  When you are working from home, the feeling of loneliness can be very real.  I like to intentionally schedule meetings early in the morning and in the late afternoon that have a “check in” social component to them.  I always have a cup of coffee (you substitute your social non-alcoholic beverage of choice) in the morning and my seltzer water (love that fizz) in the afternoon. There is something that just feels social for me about sharing a beverage with someone while we are talking.  I also try, if at all possible, to do these calls over video chat.  I just love Zoom, it is so easy to use and within 30 seconds I can schedule the meeting, put it on my calendar, and send the invite to someone.  

2. Carve Out Dedicated Work Space. I realize this work from home scenario many are facing may not have given you time to put together a complete dedicated office with a door and a desk and comfy leather chair. You really don’t need all of that, anyway, but you do need a place that is going to be your designated work space. It is important that you dedicate that space and that it is not in front of the TV while Fox News broadcasts all the latest scare news. Having a dedicated space will tell your brain this is now where you work. If you can avoid it, try not to make the kitchen table your office, because this is likely grand central station in your house, if it is at all like mine, and it is really hard to have meetings and concentrate with a lot of traffic. 

3. Keep Your Routine. If you are used to being at the office by 7:30am, continue to get up at the same time. If you shower in the morning, then by all means continue this habit. Get dressed like you are going to work and be at your desk by 7:30am, ready to engage.  What you may find is that when you don’t have the 15 or 30 or 60 or 90 minute commute, you can put that time to good use and start that book you have always wanted to get to but just never had the time.  If you eat lunch, take a lunch break. You can still schedule lunch meetings if you want, just warm up your soup or make your sandwich and do the meeting over video conference.  One thing I find about working from home is that I have to get up and take more frequent stretches and walks.  I try and keep them around 5 or 10 minutes, but I try and get up at least every 60 to 90 minutes and stretch.  Then, end your day when you would typically leave your office.  Pick up your book and do another chapter to account for your commute.  When you are finished working, then close your device and be finished.  WARNING: Working from home is not a time to sort of work while you clean the shower that has not been cleaned in a while. Your organization is still expecting full work productivity. Don’t fall into the trap of half-working half-whatever else needs done. 

4. Communicate Expectations.  Most people who you work with will understand that everyone is in a new normal. Your family and friends may not. They may see this as, well, mom and dad are home, so it must be like the weekend.  I have found it really important to communicate with my wife that when I am working, it is like I am not here. Now, if there is an emergency, then by all means come get me. But this should be more rare than a total eclipse of the sun. If you clearly establish boundaries I think you will find you will be just as, if not more, productive. Running out of Mac and Cheese or toilet paper has to wait until you would normally get home to resolve the issue.  I have found that a kind word like, “Is this an emergency or can it wait until I am finished working” works well for me and helps establish appropriate boundaries.  

5. Pay Attention to Habits. You are in an interesting space of getting to form some new habits. For this, I think we do turn to the research. Wendy Wood, in her book Good Habits/Bad Habits, reviewed 64 studies and found that for some behaviors, people’s actions aligned with their intentions. For example, if they intended to get a flu shot or enroll in a class, they did as they intended. The stronger the plan for these one off type things the more likely they were to do them. But for other behaviors and actions that are repeated more often, intentions didn’t matter that much. Things like taking a bus or recycling, for example. People might want to recycle, but turns out that intention doesn’t matter that much. Persistence and the formation of habit have little to do with will power or the mere desire to accomplish.  What is needed is repetition of the desired behavior. So, as you think about working from home, put all your good intentions aside and practice what it is that you want your behavior to be.

I hope you found this interesting to think through as we all navigate these most difficult of days.   If you know someone who is going to be working from home why not forward this post to them and encourage them to sign up for the blog?

 If you have ideas on how to be successful working from home, please send me a note with your thoughts. I promise to give you credit for your idea if I do a “reader’s hacks” type post in the future.

Best Hopes,

Scott

The Battle Rages Between Impulse Control and Rationalization

So I am flying home from Chattanooga last night after working with one of my favorite clients. It was a good day of coaching, working with this firm to help grow their leaders for the next level of leadership.

I got to the airport around 5:15 for my 6:08 flight to Charlotte, then home to Orlando, arriving around 10:45pm.  Everything was on time and I was really relaxed and feeling great. A little hungry, but since I had about 90 minutes in Charlotte (CLT), my plan was to stop and grab a salad in the terminal. I have really been focused on staying healthy since Christmas and the diet and exercise plan really seemed to be working for me.  As I was reflecting on this plan, I received an alert over my phone…

Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 6:35pm.  No problem, still time to grab a salad and make it to my gate on time.

About 10 minutes later, another alert: Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 7:04pm. My timeline for having a relaxing salad in CLT was shrinking as I was down to about 40 minutes to connect to my Orlando flight. 

I can still do it. I might have to grab the salad and eat on the plane but this night would not be the first when I would have to do that.  

It was interesting, I could feel the tension mounting and the stress increasing as my timeline slowly slipped away. About 10 minutes later a flash came across my phone:

Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 7:25pm.

Well, I just missed my flight to Orlando. I knew there was another flight after mine and I have pretty good status on the airline I was flying so I was sure they would rebook me. 

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at the time. It is funny how  I had gone from this happy, self-actualized human being to anxious and self-centered in under an hour. Just because a circumstance that I could not control had changed.

So, realizing that I was not going to get my salad in CLT, I walked over to the little cafe in the Chattanooga airport, pulled myself up to the bar and asked for a menu. Here is the conversation that ensued:

Bartender: “Want anything to drink?”

Me: “No, I am really trying to limit my alcohol, especially during the week…”

Long pause

Me: “but since my flight is delayed, I will have a beer.”

Bartender: “16 or 22 ounce?”

Me: “16…No, make it a 22, what the heck! Who knows how long I will be here.”

Bartender: “Sounds good, now what do you want to eat?”

Me: “I will have the Chicken Club with Extra Bacon”

Bartender: “You want a side with that? You can have a salad, fruit, or kettle chips.”

Do I really have to tell you what I said in response to his question?

What Happened

As I was reflecting on what happened during that very short amount of time it really hit me: My emotions got the best of me.

I started feeling really sorry for myself. I was feeling lonely and anxious and disappointed all at the same time. Lonely because I was going to miss seeing my wife who would be long asleep by the time I got home. Anxious because I was not confident my flight was actually going to leave Chattanooga at all that night. Disappointed because I had intended to make a great, healthy choice for dinner.

Then, while sitting at the bar, as these emotions took their effect on me, I lost my Impulse Control. 

Oscar Wilde wrote in Lady Windermere’s Fan, “I can resist everything except temptation.”

Impulse Control is an ability to delay or resist an impulse or temptation to act. It entails avoiding rash behaviors and being compromised in decision making. People who display Impulse Control are self-aware when they are frustrated, lonely, anxious, or disappointed. Those with Impulse Control can delay gratification and are not slave to the emotions that stimulate poor decisions.

Grace is realizing that humans make mistakes, forgiving themselves, and getting back to the habits they know are in their best interest.

Of course, I had the kettle chips for my side. 

The next night, Kim fixed a very healthy salmon salad for us and all is again well with the world. 

My Take-A-Way

Even though I coach and teach emotional intelligence, I still have these moments, especially when I am feeling lonely and disappointed, where I act out of my norm and display lower impulse control than I normally would have. The point is to find these emotional tensions and to recognize them as triggers so that the next time I have a flight delayed (not if I have a flight delayed, but when it happens, because it will happen again) and I am feeling lonely and disappointed that I recognize this. I need to pick up the phone and call my wife and talk to her so I don’t feel lonely. Realizing I am still going to get home safely and not to be so disappointed, it is only a matter of timing and an hour or two at most.  

If I can show Impulse Control in the moment, then I can delay my gratification.  Not so that I will never have a Chicken Club with extra Bacon, Kettle Chips, and a beer, but that I choose when I am going to have these things and that they are not a default pleasure for me.  

These default pleasures rarely if ever really satisfy.  It is better to plan and anticipate to enjoy the things you like rather than use them to cover some emotional wound that really isn’t that bad to begin with.

I also think it is really important when we notice these things, that we forgive ourselves and rather than beat ourselves up or throw in the towel or have a bunch of shame around it, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, forgive ourselves, and put a plan in place so when it happens again we are ready to have better Impulse Control.

How Grateful Are You...Really?

The emotion of gratitude has received a lot of positive press in the last few years. 

Whether it is the popular Brene Brown talking on the relationship between joy and gratitude Or The TEDxSF talk by Louie Schwartzbert on Gratitude which has over 5M views.

However, after talking with my good friend and Pastor, Ken Bish, I think I have a brand new appreciation for this powerful emotion.

Ken shared his thoughts with me from his journal recently. I share his post below with his permission. I thought it might give you a chance to experience this emotion for yourself. 

Gratitude

How do we express it?  How do we make it sincere?   

If we are not careful, a form of expression that we express as gratitude is really either appeasement or manipulation.   Appeasement is originally fleshed out as a child when we are told, “Now you tell Mrs. Jones thank you for making you that lima bean casserole.”   So we learn to say thank you to placate others.   

Or we are told by others, “Oh, you are so great.  You are the best at ….”   Then the request comes, “can you do this for me?”  Because of that, we guard ourselves against giving or accepting gratitude.

Yet we want to express it but are uncertain how to genuinely do so.  I find myself in that spot right now.  I am honestly at a loss for words.   

The reason Ken is at a loss for words is that he has Liver Cancer and is in need of a transplant to save his life.

Ken’s Story

On Sunday, January 19th we rushed to Tampa General Hospital as we were told a liver was available and I was wheeled into surgery on Tuesday, January 21st.   

At times modern medicine makes us think surgeries are commonplace.  Yet it is almost impossible for me to fathom that a group of medical personnel has successfully removed a liver from someone who had just died and exchanged it for my cancerous liver.  How do I say thank you for that?  

As I said, I am honestly at a loss for words.

The doctors continue to tell us that I am doing exceptionally well.  That causes me to think my rubric for “doing well” is much different than the doctors.  

Prayers are appreciated for pain relief, being able to sleep and for overall healing.  The doctors tell us that the first 3 months are very important in terms of my body not rejecting the new liver.   The great news is we are on the right track!

I have so many people to thank. The medical personnel many of whom I do not know, along with my family and friends.  At this point in my early healing stage, simply talking has been extremely exhausting.  (I know what you are thinking:  Ken Bish cannot talk?  That is like Beethoven not being able to compose or Michelangelo not being able to paint or sculpt but that is for another post.) 

 I have listened to every voicemail; read every text, and considered every post.  Every one of them.  Please know that as I have read each one, I have intentionally thought back to a time God used you in my life and gave thanks to our Creator for you.  Each and every one of them. 

That is how I have chosen to express my gratitude.  I have sincerely thanked God for each of you. 

Finally, please hear these last two words which come from the depth of my heart:  “Thank you!”

Thanks, Ken for your courage and willingness to share your story and to model for so many of us what it means to be grateful.

The Power of Gratitude

I think you will agree with me that Ken has a lot to be grateful for. I mean, come on, a liver transplant. Really! Of course he is grateful.

As Ken continues to heal and be thankful, I think we all have this powerful spirit within us. To be thankful. To be courageous. To celebrate.

You do not have to have had a liver transplant to be thankful and experience gratitude.

I, for one, am grateful for you. Powerfully thankful for the people who have crossed the path of my life. You have added more joy to me than you will ever know.

Ken, I get it I think. Grateful to God for just one more day to be able to be in relationship with other humans. Thanks, my friend, for your courage.

Have you ever been surprised by this?

This is my third and final post in a series on the emotion of surprise. If you missed the first two, you can click here to catch up.

To be surprised by something is to have your attention shifted from one sense of reality to another. 

In organizations, it is popular to say that feedback is a gift. I have even said it myself! And, it is true…feedback is a gift. Sometimes, however, that gift is not appreciated at the time.  Sometimes feedback is like a good stew, and it has to simmer with the rest of the ingredients in order for us to be able to appreciate the overall flavor.  It takes time.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know my favorite book on the subject of feedback, is one by Douglas Stone and Shelia Heen; Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.

In their work, Doug and Shelia say feedback includes any information you get about yourself. It not only includes what gets ranked, but what gets thanked, commented on, and invited back or dropped. It can be formal, informal, direct, or implicit. It can be blunt or baroque (I had to look this word up if I am honest), totally obvious or so subtle you’re not sure what it is.

I think you can feel the complexity as Doug and Shelia unpack the idea a bit.

The other day my wife said to me from the kitchen, “Are you still in your office working?”  What do you mean am I still in my office working? Was my thought. Are you checking on me because you know how important this project is, or was that a passive-aggressive way to say stop working and come spend some time with me fixing dinner?  Are you excited about the project I am working on because you know how good it will be for the business, or are you sick of me spending so much time working and you want me to spend more time with you?

Now that is complex!

“Are you still in your office working?” Seven simple words. It could be she has just lost track of me and wants to know where I am. It could be that she has about had it with my “work ethic” and is going to make me choose between work and her.

She simply said the words, I am the one who is in the process of assigning the meaning to the words. 

Measuring the Tone of Feedback

I think feedback takes on this tenor. So many times we get feedback like, “Jerry takes a long time to get to the point.” This could mean I appreciate his level of detail, or he needs to be more concise. 

The deliverer of the feedback has an intention for sharing, the receiver of the feedback is impacted.  However, these two things, the intention and the impact, do not always come together.  

This is why feedback needs to be a conversation. It has to be reserved for those times when the intention of the deliverer and the impact it has on the receiver can be aligned.  If there is not time for the alignment, much like putting on a new set of tires on a car without balancing them, they might roll but the ride will be rough and you will not get as good of gas mileage as you would had you taken the time to align the tires from the start.

My Feedback Gift

At Christmas time every year, my mother-in-law gives my wife and me a card.  That is no surprise.

The cards are beautiful expressions of the season of Christmas and come complete with words from Hallmark where the important words are underlined and circled. In addition, there is a handwritten bible verse along with some personal expressions of love and gratitude.  These cards are priceless. I really cherish the thoughts and the sentiments that are shared.

The surprise this year is that in the card my mother-in-law did an acrostic of both mine and my wife’s names.  I know you know what an acrostic is, but just in case, it is where the first letter of each line spells out a specific word. 

In the card was our Names:

S

C

O

T

T

&

K

I

M

M

I

J

O

Then what she did was to put a word that described us next to each letter. Now I am not going to share what was written for each letter. But I am going to share two of the letters in my name. To me, they were very interesting because they represented feedback on how I show up.  Also interesting because in my mind some contrast is present.

C-Candid

T-Tolerant

Here is the thing about surprise, what did she mean when she put candid and tolerant together?

Candid, am I too forthright with my opinion? Usually, candid means truthful and straightforward, but it could also be hurtful if not accompanied by empathy.

Tolerant, am I too accepting of opinions I do not agree with? Or am I patient with people not like me?

Norma’s perspective of me is that I am both candid and tolerant.  This is just such good feedback.  I think what is needed is to sit down with her over a hot cup of tea and explore what she means by this so I can make sure I am showing up as intended….honest, caring, and compassionate.

Surprise: A Requirement for Getting Unstuck

Last week I wrote a bit on the emotion of surprise and the value that a professional coach can bring to an organization.

This week, I want to give you a specific example of how using the emotion of surprise can be a valuable tool to have in your tool belt as a coach. 

A Story

I am currently working with the most amazing individual. Super talented. Highly prized by the organization. Gifted with skills in finance. Gifted with people.  

There is just this one thing that is constantly nagging, pulling this leader down into the depths of almost despair. It is noticeable by me and by others I have interviewed in the organization.

This leader shows up in the dumps, a little bit like the fictional character Eeyore from Winnie The Pooh. Eeyore, who is famously known for saying things like, “It’s not much of a tail, but I’m sort of attached to it.”  My client would say, “I did the best I could with the time I had."

Eeyore: “If it is a good morning, which I doubt.”
My client: “I will have to wait until the end of the day to tell you if it was good or not.”

Eeyore: “Thanks for noticin’ me.”;
My client: “It was nothin.’”

 The conversations are always a bit on the negative side.  When we talked about this, the client’s reaction was “I’m just trying to be humble. I really don’t want to be seen as bragging, taking credit, or a know-it-all.”

Then came this, “Dr. Livingston, you are one of the smartest people I know, I hope you can help me with this.”  

The Surprise

"I understand your desire to be seen as humble,” I empathized, “it is really a noble character trait.”

“Although I have to say if you think I am one of the smartest people you know, you need to get out and meet more people. I know it feels to you like you have a sense of inferiority and you are positioning this as humility.”

Then I asked the surprising question, to try to help get the leader unstuck: What if this inferiority you are feeling is a facade that is really masking a deeper felt (sometimes unconscious) sense of superiority?

Long pause…..deafening silence….almost a full minute.

"What do you mean?” the client asked.

What if this Eeyore facade is really masking what you really feel, which is that you are pretty good. Is it possible you do not want to be seen as arrogant, so to guard against this you show up as what you are calling humble, but is actually experienced by others as inferiority.*

Long pause…More deafening silence….felt like an hour.

“I have never really thought about it that way before. I don’t know if you are right or not but it is interesting.”

Coaching goal accomplished.  

By bringing an element of surprise into the discussion, the client is now unstuck. Since a safe space had been created with the client, and an air of trust existed, the element of surprise was a great emotion to lean on.  

As an external coach, I don’t need to be right.  In my mind, it is not about being right or wrong, it is about helping the client to get unstuck and move.

Often times, the emotion of surprise is useful as it jars the client from what they are seeing or experiencing into a new reality.  

As an internal coach, consider cautiously using this technique, because of the need to have a longterm relationship. However, I do think it is possible to be used from time to time to help a person get a glimpse of a different reality.

---

*The theory I was using here was not out of left field. While I didn’t need to be right, it is at least important to be grounded. According to Dr. Aqualus Gordon, "While not necessarily evidence of a full complex, examples of this inferiority dynamic are observable when we do things like:

• Reject praise we duly deserve.

• Fish for compliments via self-deprecation (e.g., humble-bragging).

• Or portray helplessness during situations in which we have power.

The client was rejecting praise and did show up as helpless when in complete control. So this was a risk worth taking in my mind to help the client get unstuck.

A Surprising Thing About Coaching

Surprise is an interesting emotion! Unlike disgust, which always carries a negative theme, and happiness, which emotes such a positive feeling. 

Surprise is an emotion that can go either way, positive or negative, and can shift from negative to positive in the blink of an eye.

Here is what I mean:

“Surprise, you are getting a raise!” Unexpected and positive. How fun!

“Surprise, we are downsizing and your services are no longer needed.” Unexpected and not so fun.

I can even recall when my wife Kim told me we were going to have our third child around 27 years ago…”Surprise, I am pregnant!” I think were her words. 

“Holy Crap!” Unexpected and a feeling of fear, replaced in a nanosecond by the feeling of overwhelming joy. “Really, that is amazing!” followed by an unexplainable feeling of love and closeness with my spouse.

Surprise has a way of intensifying our other emotions.  According to Ingred Fatell Lee, author of the book Joyful: The Surprising Power Of Ordinary Things To Create Extraordinary Happiness, surprise acts like a magnifying glass for joy by giving the tiny pleasure heightened significance.

Surprise is one of the six primary emotions identified by psychologist Paul Ekman and is so necessary as a human because it can quickly divert our attention from one thing to another. Surprise is a kind of a warning signal to say “Hey, pay attention to this new thing, that other thing you were concentrating on needs to be deprioritized and this new thing needs some focus.”

Surprise ranges in intensity from amazement to a mild distraction.  

I Was Surprised

I was recently having a conversation with a friend who was trying to get a better idea of what my coaching business was all about.

“Tell me what you do again?” he asked.

“I help people get an idea of what their leadership looks like,” I told him.  “By using some assessments, and interviewing people they interact with, I give them a mosaic of what their leadership looks like. I then come alongside them and help them make any changes they see in their approach.  In a nutshell, that is what I do.”

“And they pay you for that?” He said to me, rather surprised!  “Sounds like you get paid to be people’s friend.”

Interestingly, I had just read an interesting and quite provocative article by Christopher Shelly titled “A Friend Officiated Our Wedding And Now My Husband’s Dead.” (Isn’t that title a bit surprising?)

Here is a link to the article if you are interested A Friend Officiated Our Wedding And Now My Husband’s Dead. It is about a 4-minute read but in case you don’t want to click through, here are the highlights…

To save money this couple….

• Hires a fried to do their wedding. It is a disaster, but they save money.

• Hires a friend to cater the reception. It is a disaster, but they save money.

• Hires a friend to fix the transmission in their car. It is a disaster but they save money.

• Hire a friend to do open heart surgery on her new husband….

I think you can see where this is going.

I heard Dave Ramsey, the author of Total Money Makeover, say one time, “If you own a $200 car then you can afford to try and fix it yourself. If you own a $20,000 car then you probably should have a professional work on it.”

Can you coach people in your own organization? Sure you can! And I would even argue that a culture of coaching in an organization is a very positive thing. 

But, when you need a professional, hire one.