Maintaining Emotional Balance, Even When Things Go Bad

In every organization, there are sometimes big changes and it can be hard to maintain emotional balance through each situation. You may be thinking, “Sure, it is easy to use the tools you mention when things are going well, but what happens when things go bad?” Just because there are changes that may affect your position, it does NOT require that it affects your emotions in a negative way.

Several situations could be categorized as difficult for leaders to work through: downsizing, merging, restructuring, relocating, new leadership, project failure, ethical and moral failure, just to name a few. Basically, any situation involving a change that does not give you a positive feeling. These situations don't have to be awful, but they encompass any kind of change that takes you out of your normal routine, which can make them difficult.

When there has been a breakdown in your company, it doesn’t feel good. Tensions are high and people are on edge emotionally. Realizing the emotion exists and not allowing the negativity to drag you down is the skill. This is emotional resilience. Bad things are going to happen.

How can you as a leader work on your own resilience to be able to lead others to see a brighter day ahead?

The first step in being a resilient leader in times of tension and complexity is to be aware of and manage your emotion. In an issue of Leadership Quarterly, Laura Little, Janaki Gooty, and Michelle Williams take on the topic of "the role of leader emotional management." The authors studied 163 leaders and their followers and concluded that when followers perceive that the leader was managing emotion, focusing on meeting expectations, and creating a future, followers felt better about the leadership being provided. Conversely, when followers perceive that leaders modulate or suppress their emotion, there is a lack of leadership and job satisfaction on the part of the follower.

What can you do as a leader to create better leadership in times of tension and complexity? How can you focus on meeting expectations while creating hope and a future for your followers when times are tough?

Here is a simple acronym that can help you stay in CHECK during difficult situations:

Consider the Situation

Take note of what's going on and how it is affecting you, your relationships, and your team. Can you describe the situation clearly and objectively, then identify the emotion it brings up and why? Are your emotions creating false expectations that need to be managed?

Hear from Others

Who are two or three people you trust that can speak into the situation? Identify individuals inside and outside of what's going on that can help you think and act productively as you figure out what to do. Don't spend too much time doing this, or else you become subject to the opinions of too many people and fall into a pit of gossip and negativity, which brings us to our “E."

Eliminate Negativity

This is easier said than done but necessary. Pessimism indicates that there's absolutely no hope or no solution to what's going on, and that's just simply not true. Whether it's coming from yourself or from others, be sure that what you are hearing and thinking will be constructive and productive. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association tells us we need to develop a “positive explanatory style." This is not “The Power of Positive Thinking” we all have heard about. It is much deeper than this. Seligman says, “What you think when you fail is crucial.“ How you explain things to yourself when they don’t go your way is the difference between helplessness and being energized.

Create a Plan - Organize and Carry Out

You've thought about it and talked about it, now it's time to decide what you will do about it. Start with the outcome you hope to have and work backward, documenting the steps you need to take to reach that outcome. The key here is to describe what success looks like to you before you implement the plan.

Keep Your Head Up - Stay Consistent, Present, and Motivated

We know it's not going to be easy, but no matter what happens you have the ability to take a deep breath, stay positive, and keep going. What are some things you can do to remove yourself from what's going on, clear your head, and rejuvenate yourself to stay in the game?

HOMEWORK

Think about this acronym and how you can apply to a difficult situation you are facing. Write CHECK on a note and stick it somewhere you can see it as a reminder of this process. When you see it, think about how you can apply it to the things causing tension for you and your organization.

Six Critical Ways To Develop Self-Awareness

We all know people who are mostly well meaning, but every once in a while they just seem to not be on the same planet as you. Here is what I mean…

My travel has picked back up a bit and I stayed last night at a Courtyard by Marriott. I like Courtyard okay, but the one thing about this hotel brand is they do not do self-serve coffee. At Courtyard, you have to order from a barista and they serve Starbucks, which is not my favorite coffee. My usual tactic is to order a Cafe Americano, which is a shot of espresso and hot water. Pretty simple.

I am next in line just about to give my order when over my left shoulder comes the person who is the point of this entire post. She doesn’t quite yell, but uses a rather loud and quite needy voice to wail, “Where is the self-service coffee?”

I had a few minutes to kill so I stepped aside, moving two steps to my right and giving her full access to the barista. The young girl serving the coffee explains to her that they do not have self-serve coffee, and I can sense the lady’s frustration growing.

She turns to me and says, “I know I am being rude, but I haven’t had any coffee yet.” (Like I hadn’t already figured that out..) “And I don’t like Starbucks, and the stuff they have in the room isn’t fit for human consumption.” As I stood trying to catch up on what had just happened, she turned on her heel and walked away.

On another planet, to say the least.

The line in the story I want to focus on is her statement, “I know I am being rude, but…”

My guess is that our villain in this story is probably a very nice person. That said, I do have to take a pause and ask myself this question: If we know we are being rude, why would we do it in the first place?

I boiled it down to three options:

1. Her needs at the moment outweigh mine.

2. She makes so much money per hour that waiting in line is literally costing her thousands of dollars.

3. She lacks self-awareness. Even though she acknowledged her rudeness, she doesn’t realize the impact of it.

Self-Awareness

Of my three options above, I’d like to focus on the third choice, because I think we see this in the organizations we work in all the time.

This is the person who knows they walk all over other people, but excuses it as “this is just who I am.” This person may have a strong sense of reality, but just doesn’t have the patience to be empathetic with others on the team. It is not that they don’t have a good idea or desire to hold someone accountable, it is that they see this as the entire mandate without having any care or concern for the other person.

The idea of self-awareness goes beyond knowing what you are doing in the moment and extends to what your leadership impact is in the future.

As a leader, how you show up and what you do in the present moment ought to be considered through the lens of how you want those who follow to respond to you now AND in the future. While the present is important, we cannot forget we will be leading in the future as well.

6 Long-term Self-Awareness Skills

Identifying your emotions and their impact on your actions.

It is not enough to know how you feel. You have to think about the impact on your actions. When someone drops a bomb on you, you must consider not only how you feel, but how those feelings are impacting your behaviors. Your behaviors in the moment are impacting your followers in the future.

Confidently expressing how you feel without relying on others.

As a leader you need to be confident in expressing your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. You also need to be aware of how your expressions will impact others beyond this present moment.

Creating vulnerability in your relationships.

People under your leadership need to know you are real. They need to know who you are. Research shows that for most people, trust is a slow-building, iterative, and layered process that happens over time. According to Dr. Brene Brown, vulnerability involves risk. This is exactly what the people who want to follow you are looking for.

Realizing how your emotions impact your decisions.

We are not always as rational as we desire to be. Stop and think for a moment about the last few decisions you had to make. Now think about the emotions that were involved in them. Did your emotions impact your decisions? Of course they did! But that is not the point. The point is for you to consider their impact on your decision making.

Recognizing your primary coping mechanisms.

Every leader needs coping mechanisms. We need ways to deal with the stress that naturally comes with our role. If you don’t have specific plans to deal with stress when it comes your way, you need one. Leaders who are self-aware can do more than just say they can cope with stress, they can communicate their plan for putting it into motion.

Prioritizing what gives you joy.

Do you know what you love? Do you know what brings you joy? Do you know what makes you happy? Good! Now, do you prioritize it? Before you say yes, take a moment to check your calendar or talk to those loved ones around you. Now, can you say you prioritize what brings you joy?

Metabolizing Negative Reality Like Defensiveness

Nobody likes bad news. Especially when the reality of what you are trying to process just does not line up with how you see things.

In my executive coaching practice, I am able to observe the above reality quite often through one of the tools that I use; the Interview 360.

When a new client signs up with me, one of the primary things they are trying to understand is how they are viewed in their organization by other folks. The second thing they are trying to gain awareness around is how the perceptions of others line up how they see themselves.

The Interview 360 is a tool that is meant to bring some clarity to the self-awareness of the leader.

The closer the leader’s self-awareness is to the perceptions of others, then we say there is a higher likelihood that how that leader thinks they show up is in fact what others are experiencing.

Leaders whose self-awareness is aligned with those in the organization have a pretty good idea of what their strengths are and they also have a keen idea of what their opportunities for growth might be.

Not all leaders I work with experience this level of alignment!

In collecting feedback for a leader, it becomes fairly easy to tell when a leader has made a mistake, or not treated others in a professional manner, or maybe they just don’t listen very well. The issues for misalignment can be vast and quite varied. Often they are contextual to certain types of organization relationships, like with direct reports or with peers.

When this misalignment occurs, the thing I hear most from the client I am working with is, “That was not my intention!”

This statement is then followed by some type of rationalization:

• I sure didn’t mean to react that way.

• I actually thought I had a mandate from leadership to do what I did.

• I am being penalized for my boss not showing up and leaving me exposed.

• My action was totally taken out of context, that is not who I am.

Defensiveness

Leaders often get charged with being defensive when situations like this occur. Defensiveness is a very typical immediate type of reaction. I never fault a client for being defensive initially.

The problem with a defensive posture in the long-run is that it inhibits the leader from being able to learn and grow from the precipitating event.

Likely, this defensiveness over the long term is a leader’s inability to metabolize negative reality.

At times, people struggle to completely understand the feedback they have received. Best selling author, John Townsend, says leaders who struggle in this area are really struggling with their ability to accept imperfection.

Leaders who maintain long-term defensives might be struggling with issues of embarrassment, shame, and even deep-seated narcissism. This defensiveness can wreak havoc with a leader’s self-confidence, their ability to tolerate stress, and even cause them to be much less trusting in previously trusted relationships.

Thermostat or Thermometer

As I am working with clients who are defensive in processing negative realities, an analogy that has worked for me is to challenge the leader to see themselves as a thermostat instead of a thermometer.

Leaders who act like thermometers allow their emotions to rise and fall based upon what they are feeling in the moment. When any of us receives feedback that creates a negative reality for us, this is a common occurrence. No one likes to be called out as an adult for behavior that is not valued by the organization, especially if this behavior has been rewarded in the past (If not overtly rewarded, at least not recognized and overlooked).

For most of us, these negative realities will fade a bit from our current memory, we become almost numb to the event. Compartmentalizing it as an isolated issue and covering it up with an “it really doesn’t bother me that much” band-aide.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere something will happen and the entire experience of the negative reality will come back to light. Perhaps someone gets a promotion that you were in line for, until the negative reality event. Or maybe you get passed over for a bonus you otherwise would have fully deserved! Then it is like a fire-cracker has been lit off inside you and your emotional temperature just skyrockets.

A very high-risk place for a leader to be.

The coaching I do with leaders who have experienced negative realities is to help them see themselves more as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. The goal here is for them to take an accurate account of the entire environment around them and then control the environment.

Thermometers measure the temperature in only one place and are a reflection of their environment. A thermostat has a much broader perspective of what is going on and can see a much bigger picture and then be more in control of the narrative.

How About You

Have you experienced any negative realities lately? Something not go your way? Did you get some feedback that maybe you didn’t agree with or that really set you back?

You have a choice in terms of how you respond. I think initially we are all a bit like thermometers. So give yourself some grace here. Then, as time goes on, the real challenge for you is are you going to stay a thermometer or are you going to grow into a thermostat? What is the upside if you grow? Also, what is the downside if you stay a thermometer?

Patience: A Strategy for Getting Unstuck

Years ago, I worked with a business leader who had an incredible vision for his organization. He was a passionate leader with excellent communication skills and energy for his mission. He was intellectually and morally solid and cared deeply for the people in his organization.

But he was stuck.

His organization just couldn’t grow the business past a certain industry-standard metric. However, the stagnation issue became evident as we looked over some feedback provided by his peers. One of the interview questions I ask the peers of my clients (as a routine part of my data gathering) was, "What is the vision this leader has for the organization?" After several interviews, the collective response was, “The vision is very clear, but we have no idea what steps we need to take to get started. It is like he has been dreaming of this his entire life and we are catching it for the first time."

As I presented this feedback to the leader and we processed the data together, his knee-jerk reaction was “We don’t have time to wait for them to process this. The time is now! They need to get on board or get out of the way. We are going to miss our opportunity. The timing is just right!"

So I asked,“Is it their lack of urgency, or could it be something else?”

After processing with him for a while, we discovered there was not a lack of urgency on the part of the organization. There was, however, a lack of emotional connection between the leader and his team. The urgency that the leader was feeling for vision implementation and change was being offset by his lack of emotional connection competency of patience. People in the organization need the time to absorb, process, and own the vision themselves.

Patience is devoting the appropriate time and attention to others in ways that enhance meaningful interaction.

Patience is suspending your personal need for satisfaction and action.

Patience seeks to slow down those fast-paced exchanges with others in order to facilitate better decision-making.

Patience is not racing ahead in thought process while missing information that others are endeavoring to share.

Patience is not wasting the opportunities to encourage, inspire, and motivate others.

In leader development, it is always important to keep perspective on a leader who is not connecting emotionally with his team. Without this emotional connection, it is virtually impossible to have the social intelligence needed to achieve organizational effectiveness.

There are a number of reasons a follower may choose to align with a leader. Fully committing to the vision of the leader is a quintessential desire that followers have. What they receive in return for committing to the vision of the leader is an emotional connection with that leader.

In our case study above, the leader has a choice. He can either move forward with his urgency and risk losing his entire vision. Or he can proactively slow down and take the time to encourage, inspire, and motivate his people. By embracing patience and connecting emotionally with his team, he can catapult the vision to the next level with everyone on board.

How are you connecting emotionally with your team? I’d love to hear your comments.

One Way To Be More Open To Learning

It seems like people these days really have a hard time agreeing on anything, and most of what we argue about is misinformed. Nonetheless, we continue to drone on and on, spurred on by a few members of our tribe or a couple of dozen likes on Instagram.⁣

Can we just agree on one thing? Gene Roddenberry was a genius!

Who is Gene Roddenberry, you ask? You’re kidding me, right?⁣

As the creator of the original Star Trek, he was able to capture very distinct personality types in character development and then exploit them in a science fiction realm. One of the things I continue to be amazed by are the one liners that came out of that show. ⁣

There are times when I will be in a conversation with someone and a Star Trek quote will just come to me.⁣

Here are a few examples:⁣⁣

First there is the overly emotional Dr. McCoy, “I am a doctor, not a bricklayer.”⁣

Then there is the struggling fix-it engineer Mr. Scott, “You can’t mix matter and antimatter cold.”⁣

The starship captain himself, Kirk: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”⁣

But one of my all time favorites comes from Mr. Spock, who in Season 3, Episode 9 says, “In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”⁣

Oh, Mr. Spock, we need you now more than ever.⁣

Critical moments need critical thinking.⁣

Spock’s quote starts with “in critical moments.” To me, that means…⁣⁣

• When the pressure is on. ⁣

• When stakes are high. ⁣

• When you feel like you are in a make or break situation. ⁣

• When your reputation is on the line.⁣These are the times the logical Mr. Spock would say that as humans we cave in and create the reality we want. ⁣⁣

We tend to see what we want to see, or we hear things wrong, or our memory stores the data wrong, or we put two and two together thinking it should equal four but it turns out the problem is not linear. Here are some examples for you to think about that fit into this category. ⁣

Which of the following statements would you say are true?⁣⁣

• Carrots improve your vision. ⁣

• Vitamin C boosts our immunity.⁣

• Coffee stunts growth.⁣

• Sugar makes you hyper.⁣

• Your body needs a good internal cleanse every now and then.⁣

• The great wall of China is visible from space.⁣

• Bats are blind.⁣

The thing is it is not just Mr. Spock who accuses us of seeing the world as we wish. Diane Halpern, former President of the American Psychological Association and Professor at Claremont McKenna College, writes in her text on critical thinking that, “the rapidly accelerating pace of change and widespread availability of a glut of information has made the ability to think critically more important than at any other time in history.” ⁣

To Dr. Halpern’s point, I did a quick internet search for each of the six statements bulleted above. While none of them is actually true, all of them require some deep critical thinking to come up with a reason why they are not.

Here’s what I mean: ⁣

I did a Google search with “does Vitamin C boost your immune system” as my key words. The sixth citation down (after all the ads), is from the Cleveland Clinic. Talk about a reputable source! The title of the article is “3 Vitamins that are best for boosting your immunity.”⁣

Now, let’s face it. Most simply take into account:⁣

• The question you typed in.⁣

• It is the first page of Google.⁣

• That you see it is from the Cleveland Clinic.⁣⁣
  ⁣

You may figure... why even open it? Case closed! Vitamin C boosts the immune system. ⁣

The thing is...you would be wrong. ⁣

I can hear you now. “Scott, now you are being a mean old blogger who is picking on Vitamin C. My Grandmother and my Mom swore by it and they never had a cold in their life. And they never let me down. And I love them. Who are you to insult my Grandma?” ⁣⁣

So, don't take my word for it. Do some critical thinking and digging for yourself. ⁣

According to Dr. Jen Gunter, MD who does a podcast called Body Stuff, the immune system works just fine like it is and if you actually were to “boost” it that is what becomes the problem that will often bring people to their demise. Your immune system does not need a boost! ⁣

It turns out that most of us (please consult your own physician for any health related thing you read here or anywhere else), get enough Vitamin C in our diet and do not need to supplement it at all. If your body has enough Vitamin C, then it eliminates what is not needed in your urine. So for most of us, that 500mg of Vitamin C we take at about $0.10./day ends up in the toilet. ⁣

But wait a minute... The Cleveland Clinic said…⁣

Actually, no they didn’t. If you open the article they say you don’t need it unless your doctor advises it. But the marketing people who run the Cleveland Clinics blog posts know that if they put a number in the title you are more likely to open it. So, turns out, the article is true, but the title is a little misleading.⁣

I fully realize, some of you right now are rolling your eyes at me because I am making an argument against a longtime belief. You probably don’t care as much about bats not being blind (they are not blind, they just rely 3x more on their hearing) but when I put detoxing your inners on the list, well them’s fighting words.⁣

This is part of the problem. Some of us have made very public claims about some of these things. You might even have an anecdotal story of knowing a person who takes Vitamin C and never gets sick. And you have told this story over and over again so not only do you believe that it is true but you have claimed it publicly so your reputation is on the line. This isolated example of the person you know does not support a direct correlation between Vitamin C consumption and immune system boosting. While both of the observations may be true, the conclusion is false. ⁣

Folks, critical thinking is a skill. And for most of us, on most topics, we should likely say less and study a lot more. Rather than coming to a rapid conclusion, let’s get a lot better at saying, “I don’t know, but I am open to learning more.”

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. 

How to Apply Emotional Intelligence to Your Development

On this Labor Day, I hope this note finds you well, safe, and thinking about finishing this year of 2021 well. 

As I was doing some research for an emotional intelligence leadership program recently, I came accross this graphic. I found it most interesting that emotional intelligence has become recognized as a top 10 skill needed in our workforce today!

A couple of things stuck out to me: 

1. Emotional intelligence took the place of either active listening or quality control.
   

2. Emotional intelligence enhances all the other skills on the list.
   

Emotional Intelligence As A MetaSkill

I don’t think any of us would say that as leaders we need to stop focusing on active listening or lessen our focus on quality.  We should always want to encourage our teams to deliver quality results.

In addition, we need to always be practicing good Humble Inquiry and use our active listening skills. It is our responsibility as leaders to be present with those we work with and to connect to the emotion of what it is they are saying. This is compassionate empathy at its finest.

As I examine the two lists in the graphic, what becomes evident to me is that Emotional Intelligence is actually a MetaSkill.  It is a skill that enables the other skills to be used more effectively.

Take for example the first skill on the list, complex problem solving. What problem that is really complex is not fraught with emotion? People who solve problems have beliefs around the assumptions and the processes that are used to solve the issue at hand. If another person takes a slightly different view or has a different approach, frustration can easily infiltrate the process. Enter, emotional intelligence. 

Or, consider the skill of negotiation.

How many of you saw the word negotiation, and had a visceral reaction?

Enter emotional intelligence, to calm and steady your nerves so you can obtain an outcome you can live with.

Developing Emotional Intelligence

One of the best ways I know to develop the skill of emotional intelligence is to become more aware of the competencies required to support the skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s workforce.

Skills such as:

• A manager who needs to have better relationships with people on your team.

• A director who is frustrated because there is more work to do than people to do it.

• An HR professional who is anxious because talent is leaving the organization in the great work realignment we are experiencing. 

• A person who is new to your role and just needs more self-confidence day in & day out.

• A physician working on your bedside manner.

• An athlete who just can not break that next performance barrier.

• A sales professional who is struggling to close sales in recent months.

• A front line supervisor who struggles being empathic with workers who are just not as productive as they could be.
  

No matter your role, no matter your skill, emotional intelligence can enhance anything you are trying to do.

If awareness is indeed the best tool to develop the skill of emotional intelligence, how do we increase our awareness and growth? One of the best methods I recommend to all my clients is journaling. Simply writing about what you are experiencing will bring great awareness to the linking of emotional intelligence to your skill.

If you need help getting started, a resource that many of my clients have found helpful is a journaling book I wrote with my brother, Eric, earlier this year.  “A Guided Journey to Developing Emotional Intelligence.”

In this resource we will guide you to work on 15 competencies that support being emotionally intelligent. You will get some mini case studies to think through, then some questions for you to reflect and journal on. I hope it is helpful to you on your growth journey! 

Happy Labor Day, 

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.

Leading (and Following) in the Woods

While I was on vacation last week hiking through the beautiful woodland of New Hampshire, I began thinking about the leadership parallels we were experiencing as we navigated a particularly strenuous hike. Rather than waiting to capture my musings in written form, I stopped right where we were and pulled up my camera.

Without further ado, enjoy the video below for my leadership musings (and a beautiful view of New Hampshire).

Will Removing These Leadership Lids Help You?

Not too long ago it was Taco Tuesday at the Livingston home. My wife, Kim, and I were assembling all the ingredients for our tacos: tortillas, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, etc. I noticed my wife was struggling to take the lid off of the salsa jar, so I gently gestured for her to give me the jar and proudly assumed the position in heroically twisting the lid off the jar.

It wouldn't budge.

I put forth a little more effort, twisting harder this time. Nothing. I resorted to running it under hot water for a while, then took a towel to dry it before I tried again. Sure enough, the lid finally gave way and the jar was open for salsa to be enjoyed.

Earlier that day, I was talking with a good friend about leadership LIDS. During our conversation, the idea of the lid intrigued me. Yes, the lid is there as a cover, or protection, for what's inside, but it is also a cover, or barrier, keeping you away from what needs to be shared or utilized. Many times it's our own emotions and mentality that hold us back.

I want to focus on four of these potential barriers and consider how we can remove them: Loneliness, Indecisiveness, Defensiveness, and Selfishness.

As you read, think about your own leadership and which LIDS you need to remove. Which of these LIDS is holding you back from sharing what you have to offer?

Loneliness

This could be something you are experiencing in the workplace, or in your personal life. It can creep up when you've physically spent too much time on your own or you feel as if no one can relate to what you are going through or processing. Feeling alone is difficult, and doing alone is even more challenging. As humans, we are designed for relationships. Although alone time can be rejuvenating, we aren't meant to remain there in order to progress or thrive.

Remove this lid: Invite people into your world. Whether it's including them on a project you are working on or asking someone to coffee. If the loneliness doesn't subside and you are having trouble processing or expressing your thoughts, consider talking to a mentor, counselor, or coach.

Indecisiveness

You may say that being indecisive comes from the inability to make a decision because there's seems to be no wrong or right way to go. While that's true, I also see a lot of fear behind decision making. What if I make is the wrong choice? Making a decision is going to keep you moving while indecisiveness keeps you stagnant. How can you lead people if you aren't really going anywhere yourself?

Remove this Lid: Make a decision. Don't let the fear of failure keep you from moving forward. Making a mistake or taking a wrong turn doesn't mean you failed, instead, it's an opportunity to learn and grow.

Defensiveness

In the great American sport of football, the defensive line has a responsibility to keep the other team's offense and quarterback from advancing the field with the ball. They push. They fight. This creates struggle and tension, not to mention it is exhausting as they keep it up until the other team scores or it is their turn to play offense. I bring up this example because we tend to think of defense as protecting, yet the defensive line isn't protecting anything. They are pushing back and preventing advancement. We can often be defensive in our own lives, having the mindset that we are protecting something. This could be our job, our reputation, or more often than not, our pride. In this case, protection is a fallacy and our defensiveness creates a barrier and tension that prevents the advancement of our goals or our team.

Remove this lid: It takes some intentional awareness of your emotions to see when you may be acting defensively. Your heart might start beating faster, your body temperature may rise, you may feel your lips tighten, or you may unconsciously cross your arms. Try to identify what happens when you start to feel defensive, why you are feeling it, and what you might think you're "protecting." How is your defensiveness holding you and/or your team back?

Selfishness

Putting your needs and desires before others is the easiest way to explain selfishness. It is even easier, unfortunately, to get caught up in selfishness if we don't stop to think about what we are doing or behaving. Consider what your priorities are right now. Are you focusing on your own advancements and needs? What about those of your team and followers? Don't get me wrong, self-care is important, as long as it's not at the expense of another person.

Remove this lid: Think about your goals, priorities, and needs. What would it look like if you included your team in those goals, changing "I" statements to "we." Call on your team and followers to find our what their goals and priorities are, then think about how you can help them achieve their goals. Practice humility by stepping back, letting them take lead on a project, and praising them publicly for a job well done. Trust me, their success will be your success.

Homework

Think about our LIDS analogy above and identify one of them that you need to remove. What action steps or conversations do you need to have in order to remove them? What benefits will come to you and your followers when you remove the lid?

Why Build Your Emotional Intelligence?

Watching Xander Schauffele win Olympic Gold in men’s golf last week was inspirational. A true picture of emotional intelligence in the moment.

For those who don’t know the entire story; a few weeks prior at the Masters, Schauffele was in the lead on the final round, ready to win one of the most prestigious golf tournaments on the tour, when he hit a shot in the water coming down the stretch to the end of the tournament. That one shot cost him the coveted green jacket, giving the prize over to Hideki Matsuyama.

Fast forward to the Olympics and Schauffele is in the lead and one of the guys right behind him is Matsuyama. It had to be nerve racking knowing you had a one shot lead when just weeks before you made a critical error that cost you the tournament.

How did Xander hold it together?

I would argue it was his emotional intelligence that paved the way to gold.

Your Path To Gold

Xander’s story is not too unlike leaders who are cruising along in their career when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, something happens. Things change, people change, markets change. You were cruising along, winning your own personal golf tournament, and all of a sudden you hit one in the water.

That is what training and coaching are all about. Preparing you for moments of adversity and controlling what you can control. If you play enough golf, once in a while the ball is going to go in the water. It’s not IF, but WHEN. The question is, how will you respond?

Xander, if you could bottle the emotional intelligence you showed at the Olympics, Pharmaceutical companies would line up to put it in a pill to sell. Dude, you were brilliant!

Here is the thing, just like Xander, emotional intelligence is something you were born with. But also like Xander, it is something you have to consciously work on in order to improve.

We all start with a base-line amount and it is up to you to either let it languish or to grow and develop it.

Even professional golfers had to swing a club for the first time.The reason they are so good is not because they never hit a bad shot, but because they know how to recover when they do.

Four EI Skills to Always Be Working On

1. Emotional Self-Awareness
   “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” - Dale Carnegie
   
   So many of the leaders I get to work with see themselves as perfectly logical and rational creatures. We all want to see ourselves this way. The problem is, if you read folks like Danny Kahnemann or Adam Grant, you will notice that we are not as rational as we give ourselves credit for.
   
   With that in mind, it seems the work here is not in trying to be more logical, but is instead in being more aware of your emotions and the impact they are really having on your judgement.
   
   Skill to work on: Being in tune with your emotions all of your waking hours.
   

2. Decision Making
   ”If we lack emotional intelligence, whenever stress rises the human brain switches to autopilot and has an inherent tendency to do more of the same, only harder. Which, more often than not, is precisely the wrong approach in today's world.” - Robert K. Cooper
   
   As leaders, it is important that we are solving the right problems.
   
   I had a conversation with a leader recently who was so upset about something that he experienced an amygdala hijack. He was on auto-pilot, so focused on how he had been wronged. How can he use emotional intelligence to turn these negative feelings into productive, positive outcomes for the organization?
   
   Skill to work on: Not letting your brain switch to autopilot and just act.
   

3. Humility
   Edgar Schein says, “Here and now humility is how I feel when I am dependent on you.”

   
   I love that. Humility is realizing that I can not do or achieve anything on my own. I am dependent on you. If that is true, then my connection to you is vital to my success.
   
   This truth requires me to learn and understand your strengths and abilities. I have to take the time to get to know your desires and motivations. It is vital that I recognize the inherent worth you have and the ideals you value.
   
   Sometimes, when things don’t go your way or you are in a pressure cooker situation, it is a good practice to take the focus off of you and become curious about what it is like to be the other person. Sure, the situation you are in might suck for you, but humility is recognizing it probably sucks for the other person as well. Can you reach out to them in their hour of need, even when you are feeling the pressure?

   “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” - Theodore Roosevelt

   Skill to work on: Developing the discipline of reading the emotions of others and identifying with what it must be like for them in the moment.
   

4. Emotional Management
   
   Let’s face it, the ball hits the water once in a while. When it does, you have a couple of choices.
   
   You can be angry about it or you can try and understand what actually happened. For me, when I hit one in the water I can get mad and let the shot define me, or I can shift the blame to the club, or the condition of the course, or my partner that day who sneezed during my backswing.
   
   The truth is, if I want to stay in control and be the master of my own destiny, I have to manage the anger.
   
   I am in no way advocating for suppressing anger. I am, however, advising you to know WHO you are really angry at and WHY you are angry. The goal, when I really stop and reflect on this, is to see the places where I am really angry with myself.
   
   “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.” - Epictetus
   
   Skill to work on: Personal reflection on who am I angry at...really.

What You Need To Know About Building Emotional Intelligence

Why build your emotional intelligence? Because facing setbacks in life is inevitable. When you do, you will be glad you worked on emotional self-awareness, staying humble, managing emotions, and the impact your emotions have on your decision-making.

4 Tips to Better Follower Connections

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on a common leadership saga I have observed over the years. Here is a link to that post just in case you missed it.

The point I was trying to make in that post was that oftentimes, as leaders, we miss opportunities to build connections with people on our teams who are working hard by withholding our praise to see what the outcome of their work is going to be.

As leaders we get so focused on the results that we miss giving positive feedback on the process the person is using.

Here is a chart from that post that looks at when praise gets missed:  

Outcomes are just that, results.

It really isn’t helpful to followers if leaders give feedback on results. The folks we have on our teams know if they are hitting goals or not. If they hit the goal it is good, and if they don’t it is not so good. We don’t really need a leader to tell us that...all we need is a spreadsheet.

What people who work with us really need is feedback on the processes they are using. That is where good coaching comes into play. 

Two Colliding Events

I am sure it is recency bias, but I am always amazed at how I can write a post like the one I wrote a couple of weeks ago and then have examples come pouring in that give some support to the ideas. 

That happened actually the day after I wrote the above post on praise at work. My wife and I went out to dinner with some friends and I was asking one of the guys, Sam, how work was going. He said that generally things were good and he really was enjoying the work his team was doing, they were making a difference.

I told him that was really great, and that I was happy to hear it. Then I remembered he has a new boss, so I asked…

“...How’s the new boss?”

“Okay...” Sam said. “I really don’t hear from him very much. I usually only hear when things didn’t go as planned.” Then he said, unsolicited, I swear, 

“It sure would be nice to hear from him once in a while that things were going well.”

I commented to my wife on the drive home how interesting it was that Sam was experiencing what I just wrote about. 

After we got home that evening, I decided to do some reading before going to bed.I opened one of my journal apps and there is an article from a psychotherapist who studies mentally strong kids and what parents can do to support this. I thought how interesting that this topic of praise keeps coming into my consciousness.

Here is what the author concludes about what good praise looks like:

1. Praise the process. Let go of the outcome and focus on the quality of the input.
   
   

2. Compare past efforts with current effort; not other people. Don’t pit employees against each other, make the challenge for personal improvement. People will always compare results, but great leaders help individuals find ways for incremental improvement.
   
   

3. Use observational language. Instead of saying, “Your participation was good,” Say something like, “It was very effective when you took the lead in that meeting.”

I thought those were really insightful and great reminders for us all.

Then I got to thinking, I believe there is one more tip worth mentioning…

Don’t forget the WHY. As you give people coaching, feedback, or praise, we will often tell them what they did and forget to include why it was important. The WHY of any story completes the thought.

How about you?

Who have you given some praise today? Not because they hit the goal, but because of the process they are using? 

How Does Risk Affect Your Team’s Performance?

Do you think risk and reward go together? Or is the reward is an outcome of risk, not a partner in the dynamic interplay of teams? Let's say someone on your team is driven by risk and we suppose they are carefree. Someone else on the team is risk-averse and we categorize them as wary. Now the team has to make a decision on a product or how to put a presentation together. The carefree person wants to go for it. The wary person wants to hold back. Depending on team dynamics, the team may find themselves out of balance or even stuck. As a result, emotions rise, people stop understanding each other and often begin looking for blame.

The stuck feeling the team is experiencing has nothing to do with talent or skill. The team is not performing in the moment because they all have a different tolerance for risk. Risk brings with it, as change does, a certain emotional tone and tenor. We each have a tolerance for risk. As that tolerance becomes challenged, our emotion, anxiety, and fear can all increase. The we feel the less risky something is to us.

There are 8 different types of risk profiles. As a leader, understanding these risk types will help you navigate team dynamics and maximize the risk profiles of each member on your team.

8 RISK TYPES

Excitable

At the root of this is impulsivity and an attraction to risk, combined with distress and regret if things go wrong. This type tends to be passionate and fluctuates between excited-enthusiasm and pessimistic-negativity. Such people are both frightened and excited by their impulsiveness. They are likely to respond emotionally to events and react strongly to disappointment or unexpected moments.

Intense

Those who fall into this dimension tend to be anxious and worrisome. People in this risk type expect the worst, they are high-strung and alert to any risk or threat to their wellbeing. They are emotionally invested in their decisions and commitments and take it personally when things don’t work out. They tend to be very passionate about things, but their mood can swing drastically from day to day.

Wary

Characterized by a combination of self-discipline and concern about risk, these are cautious, organized people who highly prioritize security. They are likely to be alert to the risk aspect of any investment opportunity before pressing into any potential benefits. These people have a strong desire to know exactly what to expect, and, as a result, may find it difficult to make decisions.

Prudent

Those in the prudent risk type have a high-level of self-control. This type is organized, systematic, and conforming. Conservative and conventional in their approach, such people prefer continuity to variety and are most comfortable operating within established and familiar procedures. They are generally very cautious and suspicious of any new ventures and may find reassurance in sticking with what they know.

Deliberate

These individuals have high-levels of calm self-confidence combined with caution. This type tends to be unusually low-key, even in situations where most people would panic. At times, they seem almost too accepting of risk and uncertainty. However, they are often well balanced by a desire to do things in a planned and systematic way. Because they are highly organized, compliant, and like to be fully informed about what is going on, they are unlikely to walk into anything unprepared.

Composed

This type is cool-headed, calm, and unemotional, but at the extreme may seem almost oblivious to risk. Their outlook will always be optimistic. These people take everything in stride and appear to manage stress very well. They are not particularly impulsive but are also not overly organized or systematic.

Adventurous

At the root of this risk type is a combination of impulsiveness and fearlessness. Extreme examples of this type are people who have a disregard for custom, tradition, or convention. They are seemingly oblivious to risk. Their decision-making is likely to be influenced by both their lack of anxiety and their impulsiveness.

Carefree

Those in this category dislike repetitive routine and do not like being told what to do. Such people may seem excitement-seeking and, in extreme cases, reckless. Lack of attention to detail and preparation may cause their intentions and objectives to seem vague. Their impatience, impulsivity, and distractibility sometimes leave them exposed to hasty decisions.

These risk types all come from an assessment that is published by Multi-Health Systems called Compass Risk Type. The tool is designed to assess the individual risk type of each person on a team and then give the team a picture as a whole. As we design workshops around this Compass Risk Type Indicator it is always interesting for a team to look at a current issue they face, and each other’s Risk Type, and work through possible solutions.

There is potential for risk in almost everything we do, and there are many different factors that influence a person’s readiness to take a risk at any particular moment. As leaders, we must be aware of the way those on our team interpret and respond to risk, beginning with ourselves.

The next time your team is stuck in making a decision, look at the list of risk-types and ask if the source of the stall could be attributed to a different approach to risk.

Do This To Improve Employee Satisfaction and Performance

Jim walked out of his manager Cindy’s office completely frustrated and dejected. He had worked so hard on the project he had been assigned, but by Cindy’s tone and body language, Jim could tell she was really not very pleased at all with his work. In his heart he didn’t think Cindy was a mean person, but her disapproval was evident. All he heard as he left her office was how complicated the project was and how there were gaps in what was delivered. 

After Jim left her office, Cindy called her director, Allison. Cindy was so pleased with the work Jim did on the project that she thought he deserved one of the division's extra achievement awards. As Cindy explained to Alison, “The project was layered with such complexity, and the expectations were really high. What Jim was able to deliver was incredible. Sure, he did not achieve perfection in terms of hitting every single goal, but his hard work was appreciated, regardless of whether the outcome fell a bit short of expectations.”

After Jim left Cindy’s office, he called his wife, who was just getting off work and beginning her commute home. “I have had it!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know what I have to do to please Cindy. She is a direct communicator and doesn’t like a lot of small talk. She is no-nonsense and just wants to get the job done. I understand all that! Even though I am a bit more of an extrovert than she is, I have worked hard to understand her style. But, really, I don’t know what I have to do to please her. Nothing is ever enough.”  

Now Jim’s wife could feel the rant coming, even over the phone. He continued, “You know I worked my tail off to get that project in on time. Even though the deliverables were unrealistic, I delivered on all the items. Sure, not everything was perfect, but you would at least think a simple acknowledgement of the effort could have been given. I think I am going to call Alex,  my HR rep, and see if I can transfer out of the division. If not, well we might have to tap into some of our savings because I just can’t work where I am not appreciated. Life is too short….” 

Meanwhile, Allison was on the phone agreeing with Cindy that giving Jim an extra achievement award was a great idea! As they hung up, Alison was perplexed. Just an hour prior she had received a call from Alex, the group's Human Resources support person, who had recommended Cindy might need a coach. Alex shared that Cindy’s team had been giving him some feedback that they just didn’t feel like Cindy recognized the work they were doing. As a result, the people on Cindy’s team did not feel valued or appreciated, and Alex was worried that some pretty talented people might be flight risks to a competitor. 

As Cindy hung up the phone from talking with Allison, she quickly pulled up the HR website and nominated Jim for the extra achievement award. She then shot Alex, the HR rep, a quick note recapping her conversation with her director, Allison. Cindy shut down her computer and walked to her car feeling like a million bucks. She even reflected how she was putting into action what she had learned in her MBA classes. People leave managers, not companies. Her recognition efforts for people like Jim would surely create some emotional connections that could not only retain talent, but might even improve her team's performance.

TWO WEEKS LATER Cindy found herself in Alison’s office, along with Alex from HR, and Tara, an Executive Coach.

Last week, Jim posted for a job out of the division, the day after he received his recognition award from Cindy. Alex had recommended they bring Tara in to see if Cindy might be interested in exploring what was happening on her team. 

After introducing Tara, they began the discussion. Cindy was her usual direct self in the meeting. “Do you really think a coach is the right thing? I feel like this is a bit of a knee jerk reaction to Jim posting for a transfer.”

“Of course this is completely your call, Cindy. Tara is a resource to develop as a leader. This is not a knee jerk reaction to what happened with Jim. However, I will say that overall your team's performance is not where it should be, and it has been this way for some time.” responded Alison. 

Tara could feel the temperature in the room rising, so she piped in with a question. “Cindy, since I am brand new to this team, could you help me understand what has happened with Jim?”

Cindy recounted the details as she saw them:

• Jim had been assigned a project with high expectations.

• His delivery on the project was not perfect, but he worked hard and did well. 

• I nominated him for an achievement reward. 

• He thanked me by posting for a transfer out of the division.

Tara could feel the bitterness in Cindy’s tone, but thought perhaps she could get one more question in. Turning toward Cindy, she gently asked, “Did you thank Jim for the work?” 

Cindy quickly quipped back, “I nominated him for the achievement award. What more would you suggest I do?”

“I understand,” Tara empathized. After pausing and patiently considering Cindy’s plight, she continued.  “As I listened to your story, I couldn’t help but wonder - how do you differentiate appreciation for work and goal achievement?”

Cindy was not ready for that one. 

“I’m sure I have thought about that,” Cindy replied. “Can you unpack that question for me?”

“I would love to” Tara said, “but I think it would be better if just the two of us continued the conversation. Why don’t we go grab coffee and continue our discussion? After we’ve spent a bit of time together, you can let Allison and Alex know if I am a good fit for you as a coach.”

What Tara Unpacked At Coffee

At coffee Tara unpacked for Cindy the difference between appreciation for the work, and the work result itself. 

In my own coaching and consulting work, I have often found that how leaders appreciate people on the team and what the people actually need can be very different. Leaders will lump together the work process and the end result that is delivered.

I had a recent experience that really amplified this. The person was telling me they were experiencing some unwanted turnover on their team, even though the manager felt like she was connecting with people around the work they were doing.

We started to unpack this and discovered that she was not differentiating work process and work outcome.

When team members would deliver on projects, she would give an evaluation of the work,  which was totally fair and a necessary part of her role. What was missing, however, was acknowledgement of all the work that went into the delivered product.

We discovered that a person on the team can work hard or not work hard. They also can hit the goal of the work product or not hit the goal.

What about you? Are you differentiating the level of the work process from goal attainment? 

Please do not misunderstand, I am all about goals being hit in a quality way. What I am saying is that for those of you who are perfectionists, maybe you are missing an opportunity for people on your team to feel your gratitude for all their hard work.  What is the harm in thanking people for what they do? 

Appreciating the person and their efforts should be separate from their work product.

In the story above, had Cindy simply thanked Jim for his efforts and gotten his perspective on what still needed to be done to complete the project, would he have wanted to stay on her team?

There is a war on talent. Are you winning it with appreciation or losing it with evaluation?

Will These Three Ideas Help You Succeed?

What questions have you been asking yourself as you build your success story? Perhaps, it is, “As HR Vice President, what does leadership development look like?” Or, “As a sales leader, how can I balance work and family? Or even possibly, “As a Church Plant Pastor, what do I need to do to grow my congregation?”

These are tough, yet realistic problems that we face as professionals, but I think we need to reframe the questions.

Any coach (whether formal or informal, external or internal, paid or volunteer, executive or life or organizational) must have the skill of listening then reframing questions. Reframing a question provides a different perspective on the issue at hand.

As a coach, it’s my job to reframe the question to help you get to the heart of the matter. Rather than asking about leadership development, I would challenge you to ask the real question, “What do I need to do to get promoted in my next role in the company?”

Or if you’re the sales leader, what I really hear you asking is, “If I sacrifice time with my family, will it be worth it financially?”

Or to the pastor, I would reframe the question as, “What should I be doing to grow my church? I am doing everything the books say, but it isn’t working!”

Please don’t misunderstand my point. I do think that people want to know how you approach things, how you set goals, how you solve problems, how you prioritize resources, how you assess risk. But, the answers they want will direct back at themselves.

Enter the world of what psychologists call self-efficacy.

Research On Self-Efficacy

Self-Efficacy is a fancy term for belief in yourself; confidence in the capabilities and talents you have been given and developed. Studies have shown that the confidence you have in your capabilities affects your performance and is linked to happiness, satisfaction, and well-being. All of these attributes in one way or another link to success.

Research published in the December 2016 issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal outlines that you can help those you coach be more successful by following three simple ideas:

1. Invest the Time: The confidence of the person increased as the coaching relationship evolved over time. As you coach others over the course of your conversation, notice how their confidence increases toward the coaching objective. When it does, make them aware that you are seeing this increase in confidence.

2. Say it Out Loud: The more the client verbally articulates their confidence, the higher the achievement to the goal actually becomes. “I am going to do this” type statements show confidence in the client's ability. The more they make commitments out loud, the increased likelihood of belief in themselves.

3. Ask the Right Question at the Right Time: In this study, questions asked by coaches fell into three categories:

   • Open-ended - “What do you want to do?"

   • Proposing Solutions - “You could search for other companies that offer better possibilities.”

   • Provide Support - “That sounds like a great idea."

The research points to proposing solutions as the only effective method in triggering self-efficacy statements in the very first coaching session. While the other two methods are also valid, they merely enhanced the confidence of the other person throughout the coaching engagement.

As you work with and coach others on your team, especially if you have more of a long-term relationship, focus on asking open-ended questions and providing support for the ideas they bring. Too many of us fall into the trap of proposing solutions because it makes us feel better about ourselves like we added real value. I would argue that the value you bring is the investment of time and belief in the person you are coaching. The research says that the value of you proposing solutions beyond early in a coaching relationship does little to improve the confidence or belief in the mind of the person you are working with.

How would your work environment change if you focused on building the confidence of others in your organization? When you are coaching others, resist the temptation to make the coaching about you by offering advice and providing them solutions. Really focus on practicing open-ended questions and providing your client the support they need.

How to Hold Each Other Accountable and Still Care

When I was young I did not do much reading. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, there was just no time for it between watching basketball on TV and playing basketball every other minute that I was awake. When I entered the fifth grade that all changed because our teacher, Mrs. Katobi was pretty clear that if you wanted to go to sixth grade that some of my time would be spent reading.

I can recall the conversation vividly. “What do you enjoy?” she asked.

“Sports, basketball mostly” I replied, bearing my entire soul to her.

“Good, find a book about a basketball player and give me a report of what you read on Monday.”

“I don’t have any books on basketball players,” I said to her thinking this would be the end of the conversation.

“Fine,” she said, “I will call your mother and tell her you need to go to the library”

And she did.

So, instead of shooting hoops after school, my mother drove me to our local library.

Not only that, but Mrs. Katobi had also phoned ahead and told the librarian I would be looking for a book about a basketball player. The librarian escorted me over to the biography section where it seemed to me like the sheer number of books on the shelf could keep a kid from ever playing basketball or another sport ever again. Just picking one from this vast sea of paper was overwhelming.

On that fateful day in 1973, the librarian at Peoria Heights Library asked me, “Who is your favorite player?”

“Wilt the Stilt Chamberlin,” I replied, thinking no way would there be a book on Chamberlin and I would be back on the court in no time.  

She said, “Let me see. I think there is a book on him that just came in not too long ago.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” I thought to myself.

Walking over to the shelf, she pulls the autobiography, Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door, off the shelf.

I have always been thankful for the two main characters in this story; the librarian (I do wish I could recall her name) and Mrs. Katobi.

They knew what was best for me. They cared enough to set a high expectation (at least for a poor kid from the other side of the tracks) and held me accountable. They knew the work I needed to get done and helped me find an interesting way to do it. They did not micromanage the entire work process. Mrs. Katobi cared enough to take some roadblocks out of my way by calling both my mom and the librarian. As I reflect, this really gave me the feeling that she cared enough to make the calls on my behalf.

The bar was set for me, care and compassion were shown, and then it was up to me.

Paul Zak makes an interesting argument about this when he writes in Harvard Business Review and in Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research about the powerful neurochemical oxytocin. According to Zak, colleagues who want to help each other perform better. No matter what you think about people in your organization, the decision to show up is completely voluntary. In our society, people can pretty much do whatever they want to do. Employees are not that different than people who go to church or a grocery store. They, in essence, volunteer to do whatever it is they are going to do.

Sure, in a work organization they are paid. Zak gives insight into this, stating that his research shows, “they choose an organization at which to work.” It is in this realization the brain chemical oxytocin comes into play. The culture of your organization can stimulate oxytocin in your employees through all types of engagement where people feel cared for and respected. Alternately, your work environment may feel more like testosterone rules the day, causing people to feel driven elsewhere to a place where they are valued and appreciated.

According to Zak, his work with oxytocin shows it is the biochemical basis for the Golden Rule. “If you treat me well, my brain will synthesize oxytocin and this will motivate me to reciprocate.”

When I shared this research, through the lens of Emotional Intelligence, with a client I am working with. He listened intently, nodded his head, and said, “Yeah, but...”  In my training as a coach, I know that when I hear the word ‘but” any agreement like the head nodding and the “yeah” has just been discounted to “I DO NOT AGREE”.

Following the “yeah, but,” came “what we need to do is set clear goals and hold our associate’s feet to the fire to do what they say they are going to do.”

“EXACTLY” I agreed. Holding them accountable with care and compassion will have them want to engage.  

Turns out that is really not the end of the oxytocin story or my story. You see I read the book, did the report turned it in, and thought that was it. Assignment finished. Let’s get back out to shooting hoops. However, Mrs. Katobi, probably being the smartest person to ever teach any subject to any student pulled a brilliant move.

“Class,” she said that next week, “I have just read the most fascinating report about a very tall basketball player and I thought you all might enjoy learning about him so, Scott, why don’t you come up and share what you learned about Wilt the Stilt.”

When I finished, they clapped.

According to Zak another big surge in Oxytocin occurs when we celebrate success. In addition, another neurochemical gets released called dopamine which among other things is the brain’s reinforcement chemical.

I wonder if Mrs. Katobi knew at that moment she was creating a lifelong, voracious reader?

How about you? Who at work do you need to show you are in empathetic agreement with? What achievement of some other person do you plan to celebrate in the near future?

Perhaps you know someone who needs to think more deeply about this idea of caring accountability? Why not forward them the link to this article and then invite them to lunch to talk about it?

Solving The Right Problem Using Emotional Intelligence

Lately I have been really frustrated by something. In my work, it’s something I do quite a bit of and sometimes it is really hard.

Writing!

You’ve heard versions of this angst from nearly everyone who has to write anything for any reason. You’ve definitely heard it from bloggers, coaches, or students who have a thesis that is due.

It sounds something like this:

“I want to write, but I am afraid I won’t know what to communicate.”

“I have been able to write in the past, but now nothing is coming to me.”

“Writing is a passion for me but I just don’t have the time right now.”

“Who, me? Write? What would I say? Who would read it?”

As you read over the list of reasons for not writing, does anything jump out at you?

I have a suggestion for you to consider. In fact, I think you can consider this suggestion anytime you are solving a problem and trying to figure out why you are frustrated.

In each of the examples above there is either explicit or implied emotion attached to the “writers block.”

Feelings such as fear, anxiety, or frustration creep in and are communicating something to us. These emotions often accompany any problem we are trying to solve or any goal we are trying to achieve. In fact, these emotions are what make us human. Every thought we have, everything we experience, will come with a feeling.

For example, as I am writing this post on a beautiful Friday morning in Orlando, I have a cup of hot coffee sitting next to me. The sun is just coming up over the horizon with a hazy yellow intensity that somehow fades into the color blue as the light from the sun becomes more invisible to my eye. As I experience this, I have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude.

I am experiencing the sunrise and I feel grateful. The experience comes with an emotion.

You should try this simple exercise some time. See if you can become aware of the emotion you are feeling at any given moment. Maybe at your kids sporting activity this weekend, and you become grateful that they can run and play. Perhaps you are attending a small gathering of close friends for the first time in a long time and you are feeling this joy just to be with people you love. Maybe you are doing some spring cleaning, and you feel proud of yourself and the progress you are making.

Paying attention to emotions can be really valuable for us. Not only when things seem so good, like watching a beautiful sunrise, but also when they are not so good; such as when we have writers block and don’t know what to write about.

Emotions and Problem Solving

Your emotions are communicating something to you. They are trying to tell you something about what you are experiencing or thinking.

What I have found is that when I am frustrated with writing, I am often not working on the right problem. The problem is not in my writing.

I wonder if you have ever experienced something similar? You have a problem you are trying to resolve, and it is really frustrating, and then you realize you are not trying to solve the right problem!

When I get writer's block, for example, the problem is rarely that I truly cannot write. The problem is that I have not been reading enough! For me, to be able to read means doing the research, studying, and paying attention to what is going on around me. It is amazing to me that when I get the feeling that I can not write, or that I am stuck, when I reframe the problem the answer becomes more clear.

The problem is not that I can not write. The problem is that I am so busy that I have not been reading or observing what is going on around me.

When I can not write, I need to sit down and read. When I pay attention to what my emotions are telling me, I can see my world differently, and often with more beauty and grace.

How about you? Something been frustrating you lately? Have you been working on something and not getting the results you had hoped for? Why not step back for a moment and consider if you are really solving the right problem to begin with.

Have a great week!

A Vaccination for Leadership Failure

Who wants to fail as a leader? No one.

None of us wakes up in the morning and says, “Let me see how I can totally screw up the thing I am working on today."

And yet…Here is my story.

A number of years ago, I had been a fairly successful sales professional and tapped for a management development program. The company I worked for was growing like crazy. Most people spent less than 2 years in this program before they were tapped for their first management level job. I thought I had arrived! Look at me! Watch me climb! Nothing will stop my career! These were all thoughts I had at the time. I was on top of the world and it felt great.

My wife and I moved from my sales territory in Decatur, Illinois to the corporate headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our family consisted of my wife and I along with our 2-year-old son Zach, and a precious baby girl due in about 6 weeks. The plan was to be in Indianapolis for less than 2 years before our next move into my first management level job. So, I did what every person with a dream, a wife, and 2 young kids does….

I went out and bought a 2 seat sports car.

I rationalized it by telling myself, "Hey, we already own a minivan. No problem."

Fast forward 5 years later. That's right, my 2-year window for promotion had gone to 5! The company hit a tight spot. No one got promoted for 3 years beyond my 2-year window. And on top of the career slow down, my wife and I had another baby boy! We were now a family of 5, with a minivan and a second car that is a Mazda Rx 7.

Great car, yet totally not practical when my wife took the minivan to go shopping one Saturday and left me with the 3 kids and a couple of friends kids. Scott and 5 kids on a Saturday morning, normally not a problem, until Zach comes out holding his hand over his eye and blood dripping down having just been whacked on the head with a toy by one of the other kids.

Question: How do I get 5 kids and me in the Rx7 and to the hospital to get Zach stitched up?

The Lesson

There is an ancient Proverb that says “Before his downfall a man's heart is proud."

I will admit it. I was full of pride. Proud of my career. Proud of my family. Proud of how I had achieved.

What is the problem with pride? It blocks your vision of reality. As leaders, we puff ourselves up for everyone to see.

What are some things that feed our pride as leaders?

1. People come to you for decision making.

2. People look to you for safety (job security).

3. People look to you as an expert in your field.

4. People feel comfortable knowing you are there.

5. You make people feel they are important.

6. You give people a feeling of optimism.

7. You give people a sense of hope.

8. You are near the top of the food chain.

9. People seek your advice and counsel.

10. Your opinions are sought and considered.

The great writer CS Lewis says that the problem with your pride is that it is in competition with everyone else's pride. Pride at its very root is competitive. “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man,” according to Lewis.

More money. Bigger house. Better looking. Smarter. Prettier wife. More loving husband. Most successful kids. Harder worker. Coolest job.

The problem with pride is not the metric, but what we do with it. It is in our nature to compare. It is how we know where we are. The problem with pride is an inability to be content and a desire for control. It is a scarcity mentality that says “for me to be up in life, you must be down.”

This is a lie.

Great leaders find ways for everyone to be up.

What I have learned over the years is that when I begin feeling like this, full of pride, I better watch my next step.

The Vaccination

When things go wrong, we begin to think about treatment. Treatment is about fixing the problem. Vaccination, however, is about prevention.

Treatment in the medical world is meant to help you recover from something that has happened to you. A vaccination is meant to prevent the disease in the first place.

The second part of the Proverb I mentioned above states, “but humility comes before honor."

Being humble. Putting others ahead of your pride. Being modest in your opinion of yourself. Thinking of others as better than yourself is one way to overcome pride.

The question I have been asking myself is, are there any strategies for preventing pride in the first place?

How can you vaccinate yourself against pride that often accompanies Leadership?

Here is a shot in the arm that can help you prevent Leadership Pride. This might sting a little, but here comes the needle...

Seek Wise Counsel.

That didn’t hurt too bad, did it?

Looking back on my story, I really should have sought wise counsel about buying that car. Not only was it impractical, but the assumptions I used to frame my reality regarding my career and my family were askew. They just were not based in reality. Just because the business was in an up cycle didn’t mean it was going to stay that way forever. Some wise counsel at that time could have been just the vaccination the doctor would have prescribed to prevent me from making such a poor decision.

There is another Proverb that says “Without counsel plans are frustrated, but with many counselors, plans succeed."

As you are thinking about getting wise counsel in your life, what should you look for? Here are a few things I have found as I have researched the topic:

4 Things to Look for in Wise Counsel:

1. Experience. Why not ask someone who has been down the road what the path looks like?

2. Impulse Control. Look for someone who is not going to be swayed by your emotional rationale. You do not want someone who will agree with you all the time. You want another perspective on what reality looks like. A person who is patient enough to hear you out.

3. Courage. Having an ability to disagree with you is paramount to you being able to learn and grow.

4. Empathy. Someone who can see your perspective even if they do not agree. Empathy differs from sympathy in that the empathic person will ask the hard question when it is in your best interest. The sympathetic person will just agree with you in whatever state you are in.

So often in leader development, we screw up and look for a treatment remedy for what has happened. Why not look to prevent these potential failures in leadership by vaccinating yourself against tragedy? Seeking wise counsel may be one good shot in the arm for you as a leader.

Homework

Look for a leadership decision you have coming up. Seek out some wise counsel. Lay the topic out for those you are seeking input from, without bias or telling them your preferences. Consider what they say to you before you act.

2 Effective Tools for Improving Team Health

Last year I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion for a team on how they could become more healthy.

The team by all accounts is high performing. It is made up of “top guns” from the industry. A group whose contact list (Rolodex, for those of you who still own flip phones), goes three and four layers deep into important and influential customers. They have done a remarkable job as a team, pulling their share of the weight for what needed to be done in the organization. Hitting all their yearly goals by the third quarter.

The premise for team health is that there is a synergy that happens where the team can do amazing things that no single member could ever achieve on their own. That when there is team health there is a feeling of invincibility and performance can increase.

On the flip side, when teams are not healthy, like when certain aspects of performance become overemphasized, other parts of the systems that make us human can become damaged. And while it may look like we are performing, the results are short-term. Worse, the synergy that is anticipated never happens.

I was having a conversation with a physician friend recently about this idea of extremes in performance when it comes to human health. This physician is actively involved with athletes in a consulting capacity and recalled a meeting he was in preparing a local community for a marathon race. The race is fairly well known so, as you can imagine, the health of the runners is really important. The people in charge of the race convened a committee of 20 physician marathon runners and my friend chaired the committee. The interesting thing about the group of physician-runners was that all of them were under the age of 55, and that of the 20, about 40% (8) of them had heart stents. High performers in any discipline have to think deeply about all of the systems that go into their performance. Failing to do this will put undo stress on one aspect in the system, ultimately causing a breakdown in the ability to perform.

My Story

The objective given to me by the organization who hired me was clear: The folks on this team needed a perspective that they are leaders in the organization. To achieve this, they needed to learn to better understand themselves and lead themselves as leaders.

Those of you who love to study how organizations learn will recognize the task as one that involves double-loop learning. The group I was working with needed to examine some of the basic assumptions they had about themselves and then how the organization defined performance. Double-loop learning encourages teams to ask clarifying questions about how they identified the problem, what processes they used to understand the problem, what they can learn from the problem, and how they can apply that learning in the future.

To get this team to see performance in a new way, they needed to think differently about what this term means and then to develop some new ways of going about their work.

2 Ways To Encourage Learning

Two ways that leaders can foster learning on teams are by providing opportunities for exploration and advancement.

Exploration stimulates innovation, new ways of thinking, and creative processes to develop new products or incorporate new technology. One of the exercises I took this team through was how to be better listeners. I gave them some guidelines on how to listen better and to focus on the needs of the other person. Then they were given a listening partner and a set amount of time where they were to do nothing but listen to the other person. We did three rounds of these questions where each time the questions got more difficult to just sit and listen.

The idea here was to give the team a new way of thinking about listening. As a leader, it is good to have a perspective or opinion but that the broader organizational teams also have opinions and ideas. The take away for this group is that if they listened with more intensity, then they would understand the perspective of others and be able to create the organizational synergy that senior management was expecting.

Advancement is when teams look for ways to improve existing processes or products while incorporating innovation and creativity. Leaders encourage team learning through experimentation, providing resources, implementing reflective practices, and celebrating victories during the learning process. One of the unhealthy behaviors that had surfaced on this team is that when something did not go their way, rather than engaging in healthy conflict, they internalized and awfulize the issues. So if one of their members was inadvertently left off of a meeting invite list, rather than be more assertive and reach out to the meeting organizer, the team would say, “it is not our place to get invited, if they don’t value our input then that is their fault.” As a team, we worked on understanding our individual conflict styles and then improving processes where they needed to be flexible from their default conflict style.

As a leader it is your responsibility to care for the health of your team. It is my hope you will continually be looking for ways to use Exploration and Advancement to improve the health on your team.

Reverse Inspiration: 3 Ways to Work With A Bad Supervisor

Awhile back I had a coaching client ask me an interesting question. It is not the first time I have been asked this question, nor is it always framed in the same way, but the root of the question is this:

“What should a person do if they think they are better qualified than their boss?”

Other times this question is asked the word “qualified” may be exchanged for smarter, more effective, more energy, more effective, better…  I think you get the idea.

Most of the time the person is asking this question because they are frustrated with some level of competence their supervisor is exhibiting and questioning the value the supervisor brings to the organization. Sometimes the person asking this question is a bit immature, but other times, I have to be honest, I wonder myself if I am coaching the wrong person.

Intersection of Questions

I have been reflecting recently over my own career after a speaking engagement at a leadership gathering a few weeks ago. The person who asked me to speak said they were as much interested in my life journey as any leadership theory I might want to present.  I was told that the audience wanted to hear how a poor kid from Peoria, Illinois who went to pharmacy school ended up as an executive coach working with top leaders across several different disciplines. How does that even happen?  

I have asked my self this question many times.

Last week I was sitting on my patio enjoying a cup of coffee and watching the sun come up. I was having some really great quiet time in meditation prior to going to my exercise class when the question about an incompetent boss and my own leadership journey were rolling around in my head at the same time.  

As these questions percolated together I realized how blessed I was to have had so many great bosses throughout my life.

I don’t say that lightly - I really worked for some great women and men who taught me many valuable lessons that helped develop that poor kid from Peoria into a guy who speaks into the ear of many great leaders today.

What an honor and a privilege it is to have worked with such great leaders, both as an employee and as a coach.

Except One

Over the course of these 30 some years of work I really only had one supervisor who…well…lets just say was hard for me to respect.

As I am reflecting on the question I was asked by my client, the emotion of how frustrated I was at the time all came flooding back to me:  

• I was annoyed at how selfish this person was, grabbing all the credit for the work the team had done. 

• I was discouraged by the lack of empathy and compassion that was shown.

• I was embittered by how aggressive every conversation was.

• I was disheartened and resentful by how much joy was received in putting others down.

I have told this story to several of my clients over the years to show them some empathy and let them know they are not the only ones who experience this struggle.

While relating to their struggle helps us to connect and build trust, what my clients really want to know is “What did you do? How did you handle it?”

Ultimately, I left the organization and started this coaching and leadership development practice focused on emotional intelligence. I realized I couldn’t get my boss to change, and I wanted to do something to help other leaders who didn’t always connect well with subordinates, or had changes they wanted to make in their approach but they didn’t quite know how.  

And although that is how my story ended, here are three things I tried to focus on while I still had to report to my “Bad Boss”:

1. Maintain Confidence.  It was important for me to remember that someone in the organization had hired me. In fact, most people get interviewed by a lot of people before they get a job. Not only did my hiring boss like me, but a whole group of other people did as well. I also had to cling to my past performance. I was fortunate enough to have been really successful in my company and that success had been recognized by many of the folks I worked with and for. Remembering those truths helped me to remain confident despite the difficulty.

2. Ascertain My Accountability. Most of us who find ourselves working with a boss who doesn’t get us will go into defensive mode to protect ourselves, especially those top performers who get a lot of personal satisfaction of achieving and getting things done.  As a result, you may find yourself with a boss who wants you to socialize more or slow down and think more before acting.  It is important to recognize that even you, over achiever, will  have ups and downs in careers; good days and bad days. It is really hard to maintain any kind of peak performance over a long run. Some of you who have been recognized your entire life may have to step back and ask yourself what your role is in this dysfunction.  I found myself constantly asking, “What am I supposed to be learning here?”

3. Monitor Stress. There are three main points inside of this thought. First is to make sure you are taking really good care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is critical to raise your stress tolerance level so you do not have a meltdown at the wrong time. Second is to become more flexible in how you see your boss.  If you are really serious, then perhaps it is time to get more playful? If you always come in to work and go straight to your desk, maybe you pop in to your bosses office to say hello and strike up some small talk.  You have to flex your approach, because clearly what you are doing now is not working. The third thing is keep an optimistic outlook. Your career is a long term play. Don’t get impulsive and do something stupid. Think about all the opportunities that await you three or five years from now.  None of us knows the future, so don’t do something crazy in the present that could screw it all up.

I know many of you have stories about working with people you didn't like, respect, appreciate, or esteem. If you have some suggestions on how you got through this and made it to the other side I would love to hear from you.