Are You Happy With Your Level of Well-Being?

A client once said to me, "Scott, I realize I need to take better care of myself. When I do that, I am at my best. I have decided to do yoga when I get up in the morning and exercise again at noon. I am going to be more conscious of my diet and make better choices about what goes into my body."

When I probed for the reason, he continued.

"Recently, there has been a lot of negativity in my life and I am not going to allow it to get me down any longer. I am choosing to be the leader I want to be and not be a weak victim of my circumstances."

His decision prompted me to ask you a question:

How Are You, as a Leader, Focusing On Your Emotional Well-Being?

There’s a great story I know about two out of 180 nuns who were the subjects of a study on longevity and happiness. If you want all the details, you can read the book Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, for some interesting facts and percentages about the nuns.

Studies of longevity are very complex from a purely scientific standpoint. Causality is extremely difficult to make a case of. However, one of the reasons this study is so impactful is that nuns lead very similar lives. They eat basic food, they don’t smoke or drink alcohol and they have similar routines. Of course, there are differences such as intellect, depths of spirituality, and outlook on the future that could account for varied results in the study on the nuns.

However, none of these aspects made any difference in the research. In his book, Seligman points out that the largest contributor to their longevity was the sheer amount of positive feelings.

According to the National Wellness Institute, wellness is "an active process through which people become aware of, and then make choices toward, a more successful existence."

Four Things to Notice About Wellness:

• It is an active process. It is something you devote energy to making happen. It is intentional on your part as a leader.

• It starts with self-awareness. Are you aware of the moment when health choices present themselves?

• Wellness is a choice. You decide to be well in the moment or you decide to say “screw it” and become a victim of your circumstance.

• There is an end game. A successful existence. This is your life. You only get one. Why not make it the very best that it can be?

Emotional Intelligence and Well-Being:

One of the attributes we measure in Emotional Intelligence training is either happiness or well-being. In our model there are four factors that can comprise well-being:

1. Self-Regard: Believing in yourself and living according to your values.

2. Self-Actualization: A willingness to learn and grow in accordance with your beliefs.

3. Interpersonal Relationships: Engaging in mutually satisfying relationships.

4. Optimism: The ability to respond, recover, and claim a happy state from disappointments and setbacks in life.

Two Considerations for Evaluating Your Own Level of Well-Being:

1. The first is attempting to display as many of these four attributes as you can:

   • Believe in yourself and live according to your values.

   • Learn and grow in areas that really matter to you.

   • Have friends that reciprocate these areas.

   • Realize that things in life are not always going to go your way. What matters is how you respond when setbacks happen.

2. The second is to have a balance between these attributes:

   • For example, you want to make sure that your self-regard is balanced with your interpersonal relationships.

   • If you have a high level of self-regard and low levels of interpersonal relationships, you could come across as prideful.

   • If you have low levels of self-regard and high interpersonal relationships, then you could come across as needy and not fun to be around. It’s all about balance.

As You Think About the Successful Life You Want to Live as a Leader:

Are you choosing to maximize and balance these 4 attributes of emotional health?

What changes can you make to ensure that you have a good level of well-being and live a long and successful life?

Are Your Goals Making You SORE or Helping You SOAR?

Remember back in January when you had that new year motivation and fresh start attitude? You had all of this pent-up passion for making something change for 2023. You had the idea that something was going to be different this year from your previous rut.

Once you identified the “what” you wanted to change, your next step was to set some goals for yourself. Most of us set goals for work, travel, or even fitness.

Do you remember your goals from the beginning of this year? Do you remember where you wrote them down or typed them? Are they still in legible form or is the sticky note you wrote them on and put on the refrigerator now covered by last month's grocery list?

Have You Made Any Progress on the 2023 Goals You Set?

You might even have named your goals something like Key Results Area, Performance Management Objective, Personal Development Plan, or some other colloquial term that you or your organization or discipline uses.

It is now almost September, and it is time to go back and check in on what was important to you at the beginning of the year. Ask yourself, "Have I accomplished my goals, or did I get off track?”

It can be quite common for people to not to want to review the goals they set earlier in the year, especially if they know they have not made the progress they had hoped. The feeling of discouragement can become overwhelming when we see a lack of progress and we know we aren't where we had hoped to be by now when the goal was originally set.

Stay in the Game.

Discouragement can be devastating when it comes to goals. In my experience, it can be one of the hardest obstacles to overcome.

The goal had meaning and significance to you almost nine months ago, so it's time to start asking yourself some questions as to why you are not making progress on it this far into the year. I want you to know that YOU HAVE NOT failed! You have likely learned a lot in the last eight months about the goal and your progress if you stop and think about it for a bit.

An analogy came to me the other day that may have some application:

In January, you set your goal. Let's say you wanted to exercise three days a week for an hour. Think of this goal as getting on an airplane. You are all buckled in your seat and ready for take-off. You know the goal. It is written down and it actually feels secure and comfortable.

The plane starts down the runway, shakes, and surges as it gains speed. All of a sudden, it is February. You likely have taken a couple of steps toward goal attainment. You are gaining speed and you can feel the inertia of the plane starting to lift off. In regards to your goal, maybe you called around to see what gym would best fit your needs. You went out and bought new exercise clothes and maybe some shoes. The feeling and speed of the change felt good.

Then comes March. The plane reaches 30,000 feet, the seat belt sign turns off, and the plane levels out. And this is also where the exercise doldrums set in. You no longer feel the rush of take-off. You no longer can sense the speed of the plane. This is when goal attainment becomes difficult. This is when it feels like you are not making any progress at all.

This Feeling Is Not Real.

The interesting thing to me is the lie that our emotions give us in this context. While the positive dopamine feeling of starting to work on the goal may be long gone by next month, the important thing to realize is that the plane is still going 450 miles an hour even when you can’t feel it. You are still moving. You are still experiencing progress. Even though you have said goodbye to almost eight months of the year, you are STILL flying. Realize that your plane is still in the air. You have not crashed. YOU HAVE NOT FAILED!

Instead of assuming that you are way off track and that you've already failed, step back and look at your goal objectively. Think about the time when you set your goals — were they SMART goals?

Most likely you've heard this acronym here before and even used it when setting goals, but it is also helpful to use to check up on your goals or even get them back on track.

Was It…?

• Specific? When getting specific with your goal, don't just consider what your goal is, but why and how you want to achieve it. Perhaps you want to work on developing young leaders. Your why might be because you want to prepare them for more responsibility in the future and your how will be through professional development workshops or one-on-one mentoring sessions.

• Measurable? Are you able to see where you are right now and where you'll end up? If you are not able to track the progress of obtaining the goal along the way, you'll have a hard time seeing if you succeeded in the end or staying motivated along the way.

• Achievable and Realistic? I feel the A and R in the “SMART” acronym go hand in hand in some ways. When you figure out your goal, how to do it, and when to accomplish it, you have to think about the parameters and circumstances that you are working in that will make it possible. This isn't to discourage you from setting the goal, but rather to encourage you to think about how you will make sure you complete the goal and ensure that it's not out of reach or asking too much from your team.

  At this point, something may have come up this year that has changed your circumstances and deterred your goal. That's okay. Life happens. Instead of seeing it as a failure or no longer attainable, just think about what changes need to be made to your goal, the plan, or the timeline. Don't be tempted to start from scratch. Instead, make less work for yourself by simply re-evaluating and tweaking what's already in progress and steer it back on track.

• Time-bound? Some of you may have set goals that you've already completed, others might feel the pressure of the time ticking away. Use the time as positive pressure to get the work done, not to stress you out. If you feel constrained, give yourself a break and allow yourself more time. If it's a project with a deadline, reach out to your team or manager and see how you can work together to get it completed. Also, consider how you are using your time and what could be distracting you from focusing on your goal. What limits do you need to implement personally to give yourself time and focus to achieve this goal?

Most importantly, remember the WHY behind your goal and the reasons that motivated you to set it in the first place. Visualize what it will look like for you and your team when that goal is accomplished. Write this down and keep it somewhere you'll see it and can read it often. (Perhaps avoid the refrigerator this time!)

Keep yourself in the air and land that goal safely on the ground.

Homework:

Take a look at the goal you set at the beginning of the year. Grab a coach, mentor, or trusted advisor and share with them your SMART goal. Listen to any advice they have for you. Be encouraged by the progress you have made (even if it feels like you are flying in circles). Decide with your support system what steps you need to take to land your plane safely. Set up another meeting with them in November for a progress check and then in December for a celebration of your achievement.

Build a Culture You Can Be Proud Of

“Oh, the comfort…the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure word, but pouring them all right out, just as they are…chaff and grain together…certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

- George Elliott

As leaders and those who support, mentor, and coach other leaders, I often wonder how well we are living up to those poetic words of George Elliott above. I know Elliott was talking about friendship in his poem, but I do think there is also a great application for those of us involved in leadership.

How We Can Apply Elliott’s Poetry to Our Leadership Lives

Provide Feelings of Safety:

Basic neuroscience tells us that if people feel threatened, they will shut down and protect themselves. This means that if they feel attacked, put down, let down, shut out, disrespected, or judged, the chances that they will be able to perform or even listen to what we are saying as their leaders are slim to none.

If you want your followers to trust you with the issues of their heart (and those that matter to your business), then a culture that creates a feeling of safety is essential. If you create a culture where people can only bring you what you want to hear, this is not a place of safety. This means that people would only feel safe telling you what you want to hear, which can be a huge problem both in friendship and leadership. If you want the trust of your followers, creating a feeling of safety is critical.

Authentic Leadership:

In my training and coaching work, this is a leadership theory I hear used almost as much as “Servant Leadership”, meaning that the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Leaders will say, “I just want to be myself. I don’t want to have to pretend and be somebody I am not. I want to live out my own morals and my ethics as I lead.” I think this is what Elliott is saying about friendship in the quote at the beginning. A friend is someone who shows up just as they are - no pretense and no judgment. They show up with just the ability to be with the other person to listen to and support them. This means that followers can feel free to tell you what they think, and they know that you as their leader will listen without punishing or penalizing them.

Chaff and Grain:

The grain is the good stuff inside a stalk of wheat. The chaff is the outer covering and is not useful for nutrition. This metaphor is that of good and bad, useful and not useful. The leader, coach, or mentor is able to take in the good and the bad together. The follower has developed enough trust in the leader that they can share in both the good and the bad, knowing that the leader will take them, sift them, and let the things that are not helping blow away while savoring the good stuff.

Homework:

• How are you doing in your leadership, mentoring, or coaching in creating a safe, authentic environment where the good and the bad can be shared?  

• What are you leaving on the table by not creating this type of culture?

• Have a discussion with a trusted advisor about ways you may be inhibiting trust in your organization.

• How might you be creating barriers to the performance of your followers because they do not feel safe?

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 one of these statements:

• “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 this list of reasons for not writing, does anything jump out at you as your own?

I have a suggestion for you to consider anytime you are working on 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 “writer’s 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, comes with a feeling.

For example, as I write this post on a beautiful morning, 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, 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 joy just being with people you love. Maybe you are doing some deep house cleaning, and you feel proud of yourself and the progress you are making.

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

Emotions and PROBLEM-SOLVING

Your emotions are always communicating something to you. They are trying to tell you something about what you are currently 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 might have a problem you are trying to resolve that is really frustrating, but then you realize that 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 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 cannot write, or that I am stuck, when I reframe the problem, the answer becomes more clear to me.

The problem is not that I cannot 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 cannot 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? Has 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 Longer and More Successful Leadership Life

One of my clients had a profound impact on me at a certain time in my life. What I heard him say is:

"Scott I realized that I have to take care of myself. I am at my best when I am taking care of myself. I decided that I am going to do yoga when I get up in the morning, and I am going to exercise at noon. I am also going to be conscious of my diet and make good choices about what goes into my body."

When I probed for the reason for the changes, he continued,

"There has been a lot of negativity in my life recently, and I am just not going to allow it to get me down any longer. I am going to choose the leader I want to be and not be a victim of circumstance."

Absolutely Profound

According to the National Wellness Institute, wellness is "an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward a more successful existence."

Four Things to Notice About Wellness:

1. It is an active process. It is something you have to devote energy to making happen. It is intentional on your part as a leader.

2. It starts with self-awareness. Are you aware of the moment when health choices present themselves?

3. Wellness is a choice. You decide to be well in the moment, or you become a victim of your circumstance.

4. There is an end game: a successful existence. This is your life, and you only get one. Why not make it the very best that it can be?

The National Wellness Institute describes six different dimensions for us to consider as we examine our own well-being:

1. Emotional

2. Occupational

3. Physical

4. Social

5. Intellectual

6. Spiritual

This week I want to focus on your emotional well-being as a leader.

The Story

One of my favorite authors is Martin Seligman. As a past president of the American Psychological Association, he has credibility from a research standpoint that is really meaningful to me. In addition, Martin is a gifted storyteller who can weave a story together and then bring home a point that has a real impact and causes me to pause and examine my own life.

One of my favorite stories that Martin tells us in his book Authentic Happiness. He details the stories of two of 180 nuns who are the subjects of an impactful and noteworthy study on longevity and happiness. If you want all of the details, you must read the book. Here is the bottom line:

• 90% of the most cheerful 25% of the nuns were alive at age 85 vs. only 34% of the least cheerful 25%.

• 54% of the most cheerful quarter was alive at age 94, as opposed to only 11% of the least cheerful.

Studies of longevity are admittedly dicey and very complex from a pure science standpoint. Causality is extremely difficult to make a case for. However, one of the reasons this study is so impactful is that nuns lead very similar lives. They eat similar food, they don’t smoke or drink alcohol, and they have similar routines. Sure there are some other differences that could account for the results, like:

• Different levels of intellect

• Different depths of spirituality

• Different outlooks about the future

However, none of these criteria in the research made any difference. The thing that Seligman points out that made a difference in the longevity of the nuns was the number of positive feelings expressed. If longevity is at least one measure of successful existence, then the positive outlook you have on life definitely matters.

Happiness and Emotional Intelligence

In the Emotional Intelligence training I do as a part of my consulting, one of the attributes we measure is that of happiness or well-being. In the model we use, there are four factors that can comprise someone’s well-being:

1. Self-Regard: Believing in yourself and living according to your values.

2. Self-Actualization: A willingness to learn and grow in accordance with your values.

3. Interpersonal Relationships: Engaging in mutually satisfying relationships.

4. Optimism: The ability to respond, recover, and claim a happy state from disappointments and setbacks in life.

Here are two important considerations as you evaluate your own level of well-being:

The first is that you display as many of these four attributes as you can. Believe in yourself and live according to your values. Learn and grow in areas that really matter to you. Have friends and ensure that there is reciprocity. Realize that things are not always going to go your way. It isn’t a case of whether or not you are going to have a setback in life, it is when. What counts is how you respond to it.

The second is that you have a balance between these attributes. For example, you want to make sure that your self-regard is balanced with your interpersonal relationships. If you have a high level of self-regard and low levels of interpersonal relationships, you could come across as prideful and in it for yourself. If you have low levels of self-regard and high interpersonal relationships, then you could come across as needy and not fun to be around.

As you think about the successful life you want to live as a leader, are you choosing to maximize and balance the four attributes of emotional health above?

Homework

Rate yourself on a scale from one (low) to 10 (high) on each of the four attributes of well-being above. Are you maximizing each attribute? Are all four of the attributes in balance with each other? As you reflect on these, what changes would you need to make to live a longer and more successful life?

Will These Three Ideas Help You Succeed?

What questions have you been asking yourself as you build your success story? Perhaps one is, “As HR Vice President, what does leadership development look like?” Or, “As a sales leader, how can I balance work and family?” Or possibly, “As a Church 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, life or organizational) must have the skill of listening and then reframing questions. Reframing a question provides a different perspective on the issue at hand.

As a coach, it is my job to reframe questions in order 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 to my next role in the company?”

Or if you’re a 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?”

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, and how you assess risk. But, the answers they want will direct back at themselves. Enter the world of what psychologists call self-efficacy.

Three ideas

Self-Efficacy is a fancy term for belief in yourself, and 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 to be more successful by following three simple ideas:

1. Invest the Time: The confidence of the person increases as the coaching relationship evolves 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 of the goal actually becomes. “I am going to do this” types of statements show confidence in the client's ability. The more they make commitments out loud, there is an increased likelihood of believing 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 - “Could you search for other companies that offer better possibilities?”

   • Provide Support - “You know what? That sounds like a great idea."

The research points to proposing solutions as the only effective method of 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 them open-ended questions and providing support for the ideas they bring to the table. Too many of us fall into the trap of proposing solutions because it makes us feel better about ourselves or like we added real value.

I would argue that the value you bring is the investment of time and the belief in the person you are coaching. The research says that the value of you proposing solutions 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? Will these three ideas we discussed help you succeed?

When you are coaching others, resist the temptation to make the coaching about you by offering advice and providing them with solutions. Really focus on practicing open-ended questions and providing your client with the support they need.

Two Helpful Tools for Improving Team Health

A few years ago I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion for a team on how they could become healthier as this team.

They were by all accounts high performing - made up of “top guns” from the industry. They were a group whose contact list went three and four layers deep into important and influential customers. They had done a remarkable job as a team, pulling their share of the weight for what needed to be done in the organization. They were hitting all of their yearly goals by the third quarter of that year.

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. When there is team health there is a feeling of invincibility.

This is when there is a chance for performance to 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 had a conversation with a physician friend 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 race. This race is fairly well known so, as you can imagine, the health of the athletes 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 runners, 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 undue stress on one aspect of the system, ultimately causing a breakdown in the ability to perform.

My Story

The objective given to me by the organization that 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 their performance in a new way, they needed to think differently about what this term means and then develop some new ways of going about their work.

Two Ways To Encourage Learning

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

1. 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 focus on the needs of the other person. Then they were given a listening partner and a set amount of time in which they were to do nothing but listen to the other person. We did three rounds of these questions and each time the questions got more difficult to just sit and listen to.

   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 know that the broader organizational teams also have opinions and ideas. The takeaway for this group is that if they listened with more intensity, then they would understand the perspective of others on the team and be able to create the organizational synergy that senior management was expecting.

2. 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 tools to improve the health of your team.

A Surprising Thing About Coaching

Surprise is an interesting emotion. Unlike disgust, which carries a negative theme, or happiness, which emotes a positive feeling.  Surprise is an emotion that can go either way, positive or negative, and can also shift from negative to positive in the blink of an eye.

Here is an example:

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

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

I can even recall when my wife Kim told me we were going to have our third child around over 30 years ago… ”Surprise, I am pregnant!” I think those were her words. 

“Holy Crap!” This was unexpected and I had a feeling of fear, replaced in a nanosecond by a feeling of overwhelming joy. Then, “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, the element of 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 necessary for a human because it can quickly divert our attention from one thing to another. Surprise is a kind of warning signal to say “Hey, pay attention to this new thing, that other thing you were concentrating on needs to be unprioritized, and this new thing needs some focus.”

Surprise ranges in intensity from amazement to a mild distraction.  

I Was Surprised

I once had 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.

“In a nutshell, 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.”

“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.

To save money this couple….

• Hired a friend to officiate their wedding. It is a disaster, but they saved money.

• Hired a friend to cater the reception. It is a disaster, but they saved money.

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

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

I think you can see where this is going.

I once heard Dave Ramsey, the author of Total Money Makeover, say, “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.”

Like this, 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.  Don’t be surprised. When you need a professional, hire one. 

How to Have a Productive Feedback Conversation

An old colleague once called me when he was having some trouble getting someone on his team to accept the feedback he was giving:

“I keep telling her that she needs to build stronger relationships with others on the team. She is just so direct that nobody wants to work with her. She is technically the most skilled person on the team but she doesn’t realize that it is ok if others do things differently than she does. It is to the point that no one wants to work with her on anything anymore. One person told me that she probably needs to approach her work with the attitude that everyone is doing their best and that we all have good intentions. Sure she is really smart, but what good is that if no one wants to be around her?”

My friend then said to me that he would try in a roundabout way to give her a positive comment, then give her the critique, and then follow this with what a good person she is.

Ever been in a space like this? Where you are trying to give someone feedback but it is like you are talking to a wall? Or maybe the person seems open and friendly, but you cannot move the conversation past your relationship.  

Maybe you had someone try some technique on you like the “feedback sandwich” I explained above, where they build you up to tear you down and then try and save the day with some meaningless positivity that is more therapeutic for them than it is for you? “Ok, just stop,” I told my friend. “Let’s talk about productive feedback and how really to have a productive conversation.”

How to Have a Productive Feedback CONVERSATION

1. Become biased for action

2. Consider the relationship

3. Appreciate what is possible

Now put these action steps in the proper order for the effective feedback you need. Did you find that you had an “aha” moment as you tried to figure out the order? Reflect on your thoughts for a moment.

Perhaps you find yourself saying that feedback is all about being biased for action. After all, the reason you are giving the person feedback is so that they can have the information they need to make the changes that others see are needed. You are not having a feedback conversation for your own health or just to hear yourself talk (although it could seem that way sometimes to some people).

According to James Flaherty who writes on effective coaching conversations, these three steps all need to happen if someone is going to change a behavior, but the order they happen in is critical. For example, if you do not have a firm enough foundational relationship, getting a person to act on feedback is futile. You could pay them all the compliments in the world, but when the criticism comes, they go immediately into a protective defensive posture.

From the list of those three things to consider for productive feedback, let’s consider the most important of these three, the relationship.

Consider the relationship

In order for any feedback to resonate with the receiver, the relationship with the provider of the feedback is critical. Good interpersonal relationships have some core elements to them which are often taken for granted.

• First, they are mutual. This means that both parties derive satisfaction from being together. This relationship cannot be forced. Even if we do not get to choose who we have on our team or the boss we work for, we have to freely decide on our own will that we are going to be in the relationship.

• Second, the reason the relationship exists is due to some foundational core commitments. The commitments we make to each other are critical because all relationships are going to have ambiguity and misunderstanding, and without solid core commitments, it is hard to maintain a relationship.

• Third, the relationship must contain trust and compassion. For feedback to be absorbed by the receiver, trust must be present. For trust to flourish, compassion must be present. Having compassion means that you understand me and will not abandon me when I am down.

How do you think Considering the Relationship affects productive feedback? I’d love to hear your comments below. I hope this post helps you have a productive feedback conversation the next time one arises.

Never Work a Day in Your Life: Independence Day Edition

As a leader, I suspect there might be some things you need to experience that you already know of that will help you to feel as if you will “never work a day in your life”. In honor of Independence Day tomorrow, I thought I would share some of the things that have helped me stay energized after a conference, or maybe after taking some time off, as you might this weekend. These things help me feel like my work is that much more rewarding and enjoyable.

MY LIST

1. Exercise.

   My wife and I have been known to exercise by either going for a long bike ride or doing Orange Theory workouts. There is something about my workout that gives me energy and life. I don’t always love doing it, but I realize that I don’t like how I feel when I am not exercising regularly more than I dislike the actual exercise. So, for me, exercise has become part of what I do for energy.

2. Diet. 

   Small meals more frequently help me a lot. Also, no junk food. Mostly fruits, vegetables, fish, lean meats, and nuts. When I eat healthy I just feel better than when I eat a bunch of processed junk. I definitely also have more energy when I am consistent with my diet.

3. Sleep.

   7-8 hours every night is ideal for the average person. I am a believer that this one might be more important than the first two on my list. Mathew Walker, in his book, Why We Sleep,  explains that we have work policies about smoking, substance abuse, ethical behavior, injury, safety, and disease prevention, but insufficient sleep, another harmful and potentially deadly factor, is commonly tolerated and even encouraged. Too many leaders, according to Walker, mistakenly believe that overworking someone equates to better task completion and productivity.

4. Fun. 

   This study by Barbara Plester and Ann Hutchison explored the relationship between fun and workplace engagement, and what they found out was that workplace fun offered employees a refreshing break and created positive feelings for the people about their work. If it was fun, the employee was more likely to be engaged in the work or the “flow.”

5. Sabbath.

   Many will see this word and immediately run from it as some kind of religious icon. I don’t see Sabbath that way. The origin of the word Sabbath likely comes from Abrahamic traditions and is associated with the biblical creation story where God creates the physical world we experience in 6 days, then on the 7th day, He is said to rest. Because of this story, some will reject the idea right away. Others will make it an idol and will worship the day and miss the point entirely.

   To me, the Sabbath is when I rest and live my life differently from how I live it the rest of the week. I set it apart and rest in it. For me, it may include worship and meditation. It may include a different form of exercise, or cooking a meal I wouldn’t normally cook. It is not a set of rules or do’s and don’ts but it is an idea that the day is different. I really like what Dallas Willard is quoted as saying, “If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.”  

I hope you enjoyed your Sabbath if you took one this 4th of July holiday. Have a safe and Happy Independence Day tomorrow. And, get some rest!

An Effective Strategy to Stop "Awfulizing"

I can remember as a young 18-year-old driving from Peoria, Illinois where my family lived, to Des Moines, Iowa, the home of Drake University. I was a very young college student in my second year of Pharmacy school. I had decided to not take the interstate and instead to meander along the back roads through some small towns in Illinois and Iowa. The ‘66 Chevy Belair I drove I had inherited from my grandfather, was named “Old Blue” because right before it was passed down to me, he had taken it to get a $99 paint job and he chose a baby blue color.

I was only about 60 miles from home when all of a sudden Old Blue didn’t want to go any faster than 35 miles an hour. The speed limit at the time was 55 miles an hour on those highways and cars were passing me by. During those years as a “young macho driver”, this really embarrassed me. In those days, driving fast was just what we did. My memory is that speed limits seemed more like suggestions than laws. I even had a theme that I drove by: “Nobody passes Old Blue!” It wasn’t macho that I was feeling at that moment, however. It was actually something just a little short of terror. What was wrong with this car? What had I done? 

My mind starts racing:

• Did I forget to change the oil?

• Had I blown the engine?

• Did I put the wrong kind of gas in the tank?

• All of this, however, was secondary. My biggest fear was that my dad was going to kill me.

Awfulizing

I was awfulizing because my Dad was not literally going to kill me, but that real feeling came from somewhere.  It was probably because I was the first-hand witness when my brother wrecked my dad's prize Cadillac by speeding and hitting something that almost tore the transmission out of the car and we seriously thought my dad would kill him. He did not.

In reality, my dad was a really kind and loving person. He would do anything for anyone at any time. I can remember going with him to fix people’s hot water heaters after dinner on a random Saturday night or tagging along to help his friends build houses or work on their cars. Alongside this positive trait of his was a strong sense of responsibility. If he told me or my brother to do something, we had better do it. While he didn’t use the exact words, he expected it to be done with excellence. I think that gene still gets expressed in my work today. 

strategy

This is probably my first recollection of the experience of the term awfulizing. I use it now to describe when something goes wrong and the event, which normally isn’t that bad in reality, all of a sudden becomes a catastrophe in someone’s mind. 

Examples from my story include:

• All of a sudden my car won’t go over 35mph.

• I probably forgot to change the oil and without an oil change, the engine will blow up. When the engine blows up, I will have destroyed the car.

• This was my grandfather’s car and a gift to me to care for. If I don’t care for this car, I will be seen as irresponsible by my dad, who I thought wanted to kill my brother for wrecking his Cadillac.

What is the strategy or the solution?

This is the point where emotion takes over from reality. This emotion can cause someone to be afraid of the wrong thing.  Can they stop this awfulizing so they can think more rationally?

Turns out, psychologists have actually studied this phenomenon. What happens is that our feeling of anxiety doesn’t have the ability to create probabilities. For example, based on the situation of my car not going over 35mph, there was probably only a 10% chance my dad would actually be very upset. And then there was also a 15% probability that I had just forgotten to change the oil. 

My brain, when my car wouldn’t go over 35mph, became very anxious. I couldn’t rationalize that there was almost no chance that the reason that this car wouldn’t go faster is that I missed an oil change. My brain associated car problems with my lack of knowledge (or memory), and created the short-term anxious feeling that can actually build and build on itself. Something small can become something quite large in our minds very quickly.

Some examples are:

• That report that was due yesterday might have you fired if you turn it in late.

• That bill you forgot to pay will put you in bankruptcy.

• That customer you forgot to call will now close their account with you.

• Forgetting to change the oil right after the 5000th mile has your engine blowing up.

So, we awfulize. We “make a mountain out of a molehill”, as my grandma used to say. Our emotions have a way of making something quite small into something quite large and neither of these are actually real.

Remedy

As it turns out, there was just a mechanical issue with the car.  As you probably have already guessed, it had nothing to do with the engine, the oil, or anything else that I was worried about. The timing chain had broken and the transmission wouldn’t shift out of second gear. It was not a big deal in reality, about a $140 dollar repair back then.

For everyone who tends to awfulize more than they want to admit, I want to introduce a couple of practical tools that I use in my executive coaching practice when my clients are in an awfulizing mode.

1. Practice good self-care.  There is no substitute for lowering these stressful moments through prevention. Just like changing the oil in the car can keep the engine from blowing in the future, so can taking care of yourself. This self-care might not take the awfulizing away completely, but it can lessen its effects and frequency. You can practice:

   • Getting 7-8 hours of sleep.

   • Eating a balanced, nutritious diet.

   • Do some weight-bearing exercises or yoga.

   • Practice relaxing or working on deepening your spiritual practices.

2. Implement a “stop” method. 

   • A stop method is a process that can help you get your rational thinking mind back. The first step has you stop the awfulizing and disconnect from the emotion at the moment.

   • Take a deep breath. Focus on someone else who needs your empathy.

   • Propose a question to yourself and reframe your circumstances. 

3. Report the facts. 

   • Take the temporary feeling of anxiety that you have and report just the facts.

   • Don’t just report the inflammatory facts that you want them to be, but the real facts of the situation.

Had I known any of the strategies like the ones above, I likely could have saved myself hours of emotional turmoil. Why did it take me over 50 years to learn this? Deal with the facts as they are, try and resolve the issue at hand, and relax. Stop awfulizing. You got this!*

*I want to take time here to acknowledge something very important. There are people who have clinical anxiety and are under the care of a physician. They are not just stuck in a case of awfulizing. If that is you or someone you know, there are great mental health professionals that can help you get the relief that you need.

4 Strategies for Leaders to Think More Critically

I was on the phone one day with an old friend who was retiring from his job of 30 years but felt like he was still too young to just spend his days fishing and playing golf. So, we started talking about what it is like to be in business for yourself. As the conversation went along, he asked me “Do you know the story of the turtle on the fence post?"

This story, that I wanted to share in honor of Father’s Day yesterday, is about a father and his daughter driving along the road in West Texas. The road was long and straight and there was nothing but concrete, blue sky, and fence posts to look at. It seems like they had driven for hours to the point where all they saw was fence post….fence post…..fence post. If you have driven in West Texas you know what this can be like. Fencepost…fencepost…fencepost with a turtle on it….fencepost…Then the young girl turned to her dad and said, “Did you see that turtle on the fencepost? I wonder how it got there!”

The story has been around for a long time, and yet, as I was thinking about the relationship between coaching and leadership it really struck me as impactful. As both coaches and leaders, we get mental pictures of how we are seeing the world. One very important task we all have is to be able to ask the right questions in order to get our clients and teams to broaden their perspectives when obstacles arise. Being open to perspective is the key to understanding and a sure sign you are at a minimum being empathic. The father, seeing a teachable moment, pulls the truck off the side of the road, turns to his daughter, and says, “The question isn’t how the turtle got there. The question really is WHO put the turtle there?”

Leadership Application

As leaders, so many times we see it as our job to have all the answers. We can have this insatiable desire for information or for knowledge. We fall into the trap of thinking that the person with the information is the one who has the power in a relationship.  While it is foolish to discount the importance of having information, I have come to believe that it is the person who asks the right questions that really sets the tone and the agenda in the organization.

In the story about the turtle on the fence post, the daughter had the information. She was able to observe what was going on in her world. She even asked her dad an interesting question. She did not assume she could explain the quite unnatural phenomena herself. In front of her was a turtle on a fence post. This was: unnatural, interesting, alluring, and intriguing.

All of these would be natural responses to seeing a turtle on a fence post.  And she also did not do something mindless, like go on her phone and mindlessly scroll through her social media pages. She is present and asks a question of her dad, in fact, a good question, a reasonable question.  “How did the turtle get there?” The father knew that in this case, the answer to the question lay deeper.

4 Strategies for Leaders to Think More Critically

As I was thinking about the story of the turtle on the fence post and how it might apply to leadership, four main things came to mind about strategies for leaders to think more critically.

1. Be careful not to rush to judgment.

   This is a real trap for the experienced leader. A young person brings a problem into the office and rather than ask for understanding or context, the wise sage says, "I have seen this 100 times in all my years…."

   While having experience is important, as leaders we must be cautious in playing the experience card. Experience can give the impression of certainty. Certainty brings with it an idea of mitigation of risk. "I have seen this before and this is what will work."

   The problem with certainty is that there is no room for creativity or curiosity. There is no room for learning for that young leader. There is no place for them to develop their own set of experiences so that they have things to judge against in the future.

2. Be open and curious in your questioning.

   The main point here is for the leader to work hard to be unbiased and to be really genuine. We have to have our curiosity meter set on maximum as well as our genuine interest be on helping the other person.  

3. Co-create reality.

   Leaders who are skilled at critical thinking have the ability to co-create reality with those they are working with. Develop the ability to come up with questions for which you have no answer.  These types of questions will help to create the reality that you and your followers are experiencing.

   As you think about the turtle on the fence post, remember that the father knew that there was no way the turtle could have gotten there on its own. There was some assistance that was needed.  “How” the turtle got there was not going to get the conversation much further.  “I don’t know” is about the only answer you could expect to get. In this case, the person who might come into your office might be left with “Well, let me see if I can go find some reasons for turtles to be on a fence post and I will get back to you.”

   But the father circumvented this by changing the question.  By changing the question, the little girl now can co-create the reality with her father and a teachable moment comes about.  As the question changes from “how” to “who," the leader is able to set the agenda and the follower is able to enter into this reality as a co-creator of what can be versus just describing what is.

4. Think about WHO as much as you think about HOW.

   Almost once a week I find myself in a conversation with someone looking for a new job. Their questions often go something like: “I am thinking about looking for a new job and was wondering if you could take a look at my resume?” My standard reply has become, “Who do you know there? Who do you know in the industry?” 

   Call me old school, but it is the person hiring who gets me the job, not my resume. How you got to the interview and all of your great experience IS NOT getting you the job that you desire. I guarantee it is the hiring manager who is going to bring you on the team.

So let’s remember these strategies and the story of the turtle on the fencepost when we need to think more critically. Do you have any additional tips to improve your critical thinking?

Having a Longer and More Successful Leadership Life

One of my clients had a profound impact when he told me:

"Scott I realized that I have to take care of myself. I am at my best when I am taking care of myself. I decided that I am going to do yoga when I get up in the morning, and I am going to exercise at noon. I am also going to be conscious of my diet and make good choices about what goes into my body."

When I probed for the reasons for the change, he continued,

"There has been a lot of negativity in my life recently, and I am not going to allow it to get me down any longer. I am going to choose to be the leader I want to be and not be a victim of circumstance."

Absolutely Profound.

According to the National Wellness Institute, wellness is "an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence."

Four Things To Notice about Wellness:

1. It is an active process. It is something you devote energy to making happen. It is intentional on your part as a leader.

2. It starts with self-awareness. Are you aware of the moment when good or bad health choices present themselves?

3. Wellness is a choice. You decide to be well in the moment, or you become a victim of your circumstance.

4. There is an end game: A successful existence. This is your life, and you only get one. Why not make it the very best that it can be?

The National Wellness Institute describes six different dimensions for us to consider as we examine our own well-being:

1. Emotional

2. Occupational

3. Physical

4. Social

5. Intellectual

6. Spiritual

Let’s focus on your emotional well-being as a leader today.

The Story

One of my favorite authors is Martin Seligman. As a past president of the American Psychological Association, he has credibility from a research standpoint that is really meaningful to me. In addition, Martin is a gifted storyteller who can weave a story together and then bring home a point that has a real impact and causes me to pause and examine my own life.

One of my favorite stories that Martin tells us in his book Authentic Happiness. He details the stories of two of 180 nuns who are the subjects of an impactful and noteworthy study on longevity and happiness. If you want all the details, you really need to get the book, it is a great read. I learned that 90% of the most cheerful 25% of the nuns were alive at age 85 vs. only 34% of the least cheerful 25%. 54% of the most cheerful percent was alive at age 94, as opposed to only 11% of the least cheerful.

Studies of longevity are admittedly dicey and very complex from a pure science standpoint. Causality is extremely difficult to make a case for. However, one of the reasons this study is so impactful is that nuns lead a very similar life. They eat similar foods, they don’t smoke or drink alcohol, and they have similar routines. Sure there are some other differences that could account for the results:

• Different levels of intellect

• Different depths of spirituality

• Different outlooks on the future

However, none of these criteria in the research made any difference. The thing that Seligman points out that made the most difference in the longevity of the nuns was the number of positive feelings expressed. If longevity is at least one measure of a successful existence, then the positive outlook you have on life matters!

Happiness and Emotional Intelligence

In the Emotional Intelligence training I do, one of the attributes we measure is that of happiness or well-being. In the model we use there are four factors that comprise well-being:

1. Self-Regard: Believing in yourself and living according to your values.

2. Self-Actualization: A willingness to learn and grow in accordance with your values.

3. Interpersonal Relationships: Engaging in mutually satisfying relationships.

4. Optimism: The ability to respond, recover, and claim a happy state from disappointments and setbacks in life

There are two important considerations as you evaluate your own level of well-being.

The first is that you display as many of the four attributes above as you can. Believe in yourself and live according to your values. Learn and grow in areas that really matter to you. Have friends and ensure that there is reciprocity. Realize that things are not always going to go your way. It isn’t if you are going to have a setback in life, it is when. What counts is how you respond.

The second is that you have a balance between these attributes. For example, you want to make sure that your self-regard is balanced with your interpersonal relationships. If you have a high level of self-regard and low levels of interpersonal relationships, you could come across as prideful and in it for yourself. If you have low levels of self-regard and high interpersonal relationships, then you could come across as needy and not so fun to be around.

So, as you think about the successful life you want to live as a leader, are you choosing to maximize and balance these 4 attributes of emotional health?

Homework

Rate yourself on a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high) on each of the four attributes of well-being.

Are you maximizing each attribute? Are all four of the attributes in balance with each other?

As you reflect on these, what changes would you need to make to live a long and successful life?

Your Story Is Worth Reading

Happy June! A few days before Father’s Day back in June one year, I was doing some research for an article and I came across this thesis that used journaling as a research component for self-discovery in youth football coaches.

A leadership discovery: enhancing Finnish youth football coaches' Effectiveness through the Transformer Research Project

While in this study, journaling was a tool and not the primary outcome, I realized as I glanced through the article many of the benefits of journaling came through very clearly to me.

Benefits of Journaling for Leaders

As I have worked with my coaching clients over the years, I have recommended this leadership development strategy to so many of them. Journaling is nothing more than taking some time to be reflective and to write down how you observe yourself showing up.

Because the lack of self-awareness is so prevalent in leadership, journaling is a key way to document what you think and how you feel about what is going on in your world. It really can be used as a stake in the ground to preserve your thoughts and emotions on any given day across a number of circumstances.

These are my top 5 reasons that every leader should journal:

1. Self-awareness: Leaders need to be reflective of how they show up in different contexts and what triggers their emotions. No matter how well we think we know ourselves, we can always learn something new upon reflection.

2. Managing Stress: There is nothing like writing when it comes to lower levels of stress. Perhaps even better than writing is visual journaling or what Mrs. Carlson, my second-grade teacher, would have called “drawing.” In a 2010 study with medical students, Amanda Mercer found a reduction in stress and anxiety when medical students kept a visual journal of how they were feeling.

3. Gaining Clarity: I find that when I am faced with issues that have multiple inputs and layers of complexity there is nothing like writing or drawing to help me sort things out. Just taking the time to clear my mind and put it on paper or my tablet really helps me to clarify what it is that I am even having to decide.

4. Prioritizing: Life, especially in our Western world, can get really crazy with so many priorities that some leaders find it hard to decide to turn right or left. Journaling can help you prioritize what is important and to stay focused because you have it written down. You put a metaphorical stake in the ground and now have something to come back to.

5. Controlling Impulses: A key benefit of keeping a journal is having a place to go to before you act. I like to just go to my journal before I agree or commit to something so that I have the ability not to be impulsive. My journal is an important place I turn to before I say yes to a project that I should be saying no to.

Mind-Blown

Recall that it was a few days before Father’s Day when I was reviewing this article I mentioned above. Then Father’s Day happened. And for Father’s Day, my kids bless me with, you guessed it, a journal.

But not just any journal. This one was called StoryWorth. As an orientation, here is how StoryWorth works:

• Every week you get an email journal prompt to write about a memory from your past.

• All you do to journal is reply to the email you get. You can write as much or as little as you want on the topic. Usually two or three paragraphs in my case.

• These journal entries are then saved for you and you can eventually turn your journaling into a book if you want. At the end of 52 weeks, you could have a book of memories to cherish for years to come.

At the top list of reasons that leaders need to journal: Because your leadership story IS worth reading.

Memorial Day 2023

Today is Memorial Day 2023. A memorial is an object which serves as a remembrance focusing us on something from our past, either personal or historical.

Oftentimes this object is physical, such as a flag, a piece of stone, or a shape like a cross or a star. The physical object serves as a trigger for us to stop, even if just for a moment, to remember. This object interrupts our thinking and causes us to momentarily think of something different.

Sometimes the object is a day. Like Memorial Day today, for instance. Where we pause from our regular flow of activity and do something different.

Memorials and reflections

Memorials take us out of our routine to reflect. If we just keep on doing what we have always done, then the memorial is not having much of an effect on us. Today, can we all slow down a bit and think? Maybe about something from our past. Maybe about an interaction we had with someone, how good it was. Or, if it was not so good, what could you have done differently to make it better?

I think this is the real challenge of memorials, exemplified in the United States as Memorial Day. Are we willing to stop and really examine ourselves and how we are behaving as a nation and as people? It is easy to see how others are impacting us. It is much harder to see the impact we are having on those around us. Yet this is the real purpose of memorials.

pause and reflection

We need to stop and think critically. What I mean by this is having the ability to challenge our own points of view. We don’t want to lose the ability to empathize with others to the point that we don’t care at all to see things from their point of view. Let’s do the work to understand where someone else might be coming from.

One of the things that really makes the United States stand out in our world is our ability to speak freely. I actually think as a country we are pretty good at this. What we need to work on is listening. Let’s stop and ask some curious questions about others about why they think what they think rather than assuming if they have an opposite view from you that they are wrong. At the end of the day, no one says you have to agree, but at least you will have a better understanding of where they are coming from.

Memorials serve as guideposts for behaviors, personally and for society. These objects really are a time for us to step back and reflect on who we are and where we are headed. They give us an opportunity to remember all the good and the bad and to put perspective on each of these.

My hope for you this Memorial Day 2023 is that you have the ability to pause and reflect. In this reflection, if someone has an opposing view to yours, I hope you will spend the time to be curious about where they are coming from, rather than having that knee-jerk reaction to defend your position. Perhaps the real work here is to just listen and be curious with them without having to even share your point of view. Let's all work this Memorial Day and every day forward on our listening skills, rather than just sharing our opinions.

May we demonstrate the ability to understand the other person's perspective before we automatically go to war with them over something? Let us try and find some kindness, compassion, and understanding in our approach to our fellow man this Memorial Day.

Have a safe and Happy Memorial Day 2023, from Livingston Consulting Group.

Handling Leadership Situations Without Giving Advice

From time to time, I receive questions from readers asking for advice on how to handle certain leadership situations. I think, that to be able to really advise, you need a lot of detail about the situation the person is in because there are so many details that could sway things one way or another.

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen in the book Thanks for the Feedback say that the problem with giving advice is that it cannot ever be specific enough. We tend to try to give out sage or wise comments without enough detail for the person to implement that advice. Or, we are such experts in something that we assume everyone knows our specific jargon. For example, “When you deliver your presentation, make sure it stands out.” Interesting advice, but what does “stand out” even mean?

The other thing that makes advice hard to give is that when I give it out, I now own the result of it. Since it was my idea, it can in some way fall back on me if it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if the person didn’t follow my advice the exact way I laid it out, or if they took just some of it, but not all of it. In the end, the advice didn’t help and I feel I am in some way responsible.

That is usually why I prefer to coach in order to help people find options that seem reasonable and doable for them to try. One thing I had to learn as I was growing as an executive coach is that while coaching is in some respects about helping people solve problems, it is far from telling them what to do. It is more about what author Parker Palmer calls “pulling out their inner teacher.” Helping them see their options and then supporting the options they choose, is to me, what coaching is about.

Now when I get a question from a reader seeking advice, I usually will read it and ponder it for a week or even more. I am not thinking about what the person should do in the situation described, or what I would do if I were them. Instead, my thoughts usually turn more to trying to understand the context of the situation they might be in and then coming up with some general guidelines or options they could choose from themselves. I had a question from a reader. The question was, “How do leaders know when to intervene to promote better collaboration versus just reorganizing the department? Is there a tipping point where a simple intervention can help to resolve the issue rather than incur an expensive reorganization?”

My Thoughts

As I pondered this question and decided on how to react without giving advice, I really saw two very distinct ideas emerging. The first is organizational and the second has to do with how teams function.

The organizational aspect has to do with the needs of the organization and strategically how the group is put together to meet the needs of the organization, while the team function aspect is more about the relationships among the members of the group. I wanted to tackle these areas independently, then bring them together at the end.

The OrganizationAL IDEAS

Teams are formed to meet some specific need that the organization has realized. Teams of people come together in an organized fashion to accomplish a specific set of goals or tasks. They can also come together as change agents moving the organization from an old set of objectives to new goals that move the organization closer to completing its mission and making the vision a reality.

As I stepped back and thought about the question above, I thought that if I was going to reorganize a department, then there needed to be a strategic reason. There will likely have been some change, either internally, like a new or redefined mission, or externally, like a shift in customer demands. This type of change to reorganize will be driven by forces external to the team. Something has happened somewhere that causes what the team is doing to not be as valuable to the organization. Rather than dismantle or reorganize the team completely, the team would be given a new set of goals and objectives that match the external reality.

Reorganizations are chaotic, emotional, and expensive. The external pressures being experienced need to be greater than the emotional and financial cost to reorganize.

Reorganizing dysfunctional people on a team also only sends the dysfunction to another part of the organization. The description I hear most often for dysfunctional people in an organization is that they are not good for the team. The attitudes and behaviors are destructive and left to their own devices will have a very bad effect on the organization. So then, why would you move them somewhere else? Just because an organization can afford the reorganization doesn’t mean that is the right thing to do.

HOW TEAMS FUNCTION

If teams are not functioning well, a leader or coach has to be able to step into the moment. It takes both personal courage and a mindset that the needs of the organization outweigh any personal agendas that might exist. The leader must have the courage to call out behaviors that are not conducive to good team functioning.

General Stanley McChrystal, in his book Team of Teams writes that “superteams” are able to construct a strong lattice of trusting relationships. He makes the point that in a true team environment, the leader needs to be less concerned with hierarchy and command, what their position is, and advising individuals what to do and be more concerned with ensuring trusting relationships are forming so that there is a supportive network to perform.

Trust amongst team members is ensuring people are comfortable being vulnerable about their weaknesses, mistakes, fears, and behaviors without fear of reprisal. So, if someone doesn’t know something, they are not judged for the lack of knowledge, but supported in getting the knowledge they need. A teammate should feel a sense of confidence to admit a weakness and have someone on the team come alongside them and say “Here, let me help you with that.”

There are three things I find vital for a team to be able to trust each other:

1. Cultural Integrity: As a group, we are always going to do the right thing. If someone on the team is being disrespectful, as a team, we go to that person and let them know that is not how this team behaves. We want to have them on the team, but the culture here is one of kindness and respect. Integrity matters always.

2. Comfort with Vulnerability: Teammates have to be willing to admit weaknesses and mistakes and can never be penalized or punished when they do. If you are a person who avoids conflict, you should be able to admit this to your team and they need to come alongside and help you improve this skill. The team has to believe in you and believe that you can improve. It all starts with a culture of realizing we are all human and we all fall short somewhere.

3. Confidence in the Members: Not one of us holds all the answers. Teams have to believe in their mission and have confidence in each other to tackle whatever is put before them. As individual humans, we crave safety and security. Taking risks is not always a safe feeling. This is the value of the team. As an individual, my need is for safety. The team is there to support each other to take risks and achieve much more than an individual ever could. High-performing teams have to have confidence in each other.

Back to the Question at hand

The question was, “How do leaders know when to intervene to promote better collaboration versus just reorganizing the department? Is there a tipping point where a simple intervention can help to resolve the issue rather than incur an expensive reorganization?”

I would argue that one of the main purposes of the leader of a team is to foster a culture of collaboration that leads to results. Not collaboration so that every person touches everything, but trusting each other enough to know that one person doesn’t don’t have to touch something if another person is already running with it.

The leader is the person accountable if someone is not living up to the team's expectations. The leader should rally the team to their responsibility of pulling the person back in line. If the team won’t do it, then the leader has two jobs. One job is with the team to create a culture of team discipline, and the other job is with the person who is not living up to team standards by coaching that person individually. My position is that if there is group conflict, then the leader is ultimately the one accountable and at fault.

What about you? What advice would you share in response to this very interesting question?

How Can Curiosity Help Your Leadership Journey?

When a child builds a LEGO creation, they rarely step back and say, "This is my masterpiece, now my life's work is finished!" Instead, they allow their curiosity to grow and they often improve their handiwork or break it all down and build something entirely different with the LEGOs. Kids are very open to the possibilities of their creations.

Leadership is also this way.

In leadership, you cast a vision, identify your followers, and build your team up, but you definitely should not stop there. Become curious about your team, how you work together, and the goal(s) you are working toward achieving. Learn about your followers and look at your projects from all different angles. This will allow you to gain more perspective on how others see your leadership versus how you see it and it will allow you to revel in this curiosity.

WHAT IF YOU HAVE LOST YOUR PASSION FOR THE JOB?

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the book Eat, Pray, Love, says that one of the grand misconceptions about quitting your boring job so you can have a more creative life is that 90% of what you will find in your new life will be boring or mundane to you too. In my own life, I left my old job to pursue my passion and do what I felt would be more exciting.

Today, I get entrepreneurs and business people who come up to me and say, "I want to do what you do, it seems so rewarding!" This really makes me feel like helping my clients become more effective in their leadership is greatly impactful and I am proud of the work I do.

(But I want to let you in on a secret. 90% of what I do IS “boring”.)

I have contracting and invoicing, managing expectations, TSA, and delayed flights. But I would not trade my job for anything because I enjoy the wonderful and exciting 10% that allows me to interact with interesting people. The one main thing that motivates me through the mundane is those people, as well as one simple word: CURIOSITY.

CURE IT WITH CURIOSITY.

I learned to treat boredom by igniting curiosity. I take myself and my needs out of the equation, and instead, I make it into an exploration. Then, I am always learning and always curious.

I encourage you to add this to your leadership experience. Apply a journey of curiosity with the discipline of organizational leadership. Leadership is an arrangement between you and your followers. After some time, this relationship can become very boring if you don’t continue to remain curious.

Through curiosity and learning, you will strengthen your leadership and build stronger relationships with your followers. This newfound understanding will allow you to work in sync with your followers and you will see your visions arise. When this happens, there will be moments where the passion on both sides is reignited. Until those moments arrive, remain curious and eager to learn. This is a safe and wonderful place for you to explore.

What would it take for you to ignite more curiosity about your team? What can you learn from them? What insights could they offer on any of your current projects that you have not yet thought about?

Let Them Eat Waffles!

As we enter mid-year, we may reflect on some of the significant things we have experienced up until now and ponder what we want to try and accomplish for the rest of the year.

This same exercise happens across organizations of every size and business structure.  

As you are evaluating your year and thinking about what you want to accomplish in the next one, here are some words of encouragement I have for you… 

Let Them Eat Waffles! 

What does this really mean? Well, I was meeting with someone a few months ago. As we talked, he described his job to me in some detail. He is a plant manager for an organization that makes all kinds of electronic components. These gadgets go in hundreds of products, everything from airplanes to automobiles to grocery store freezers. His job is to oversee the plant’s manufacturing of these things and to ensure they get to the right customer.  He finished his description of his role simply with this statement, “It is pretty mundane stuff, nothing major.”

Wait! That really struck me and made me stop and ask, “What do you mean nothing major?” The way my brain works (which is quite odd at times, I will admit), I added, “Did you say grocery store freezers?”  I went on to tell him, “To me, and lots of other people too, that is a really big deal!” 

One reason that this is so big to me is that I love frozen waffles. Every time we go to our local grocery store, I take a walk down the frozen waffle aisle to see what is on sale and what items are new, then I decide what I am going to buy. It is rare that I go to the store and do NOT pick up a box of delicious frozen waffles. 

Then it hit me - this guy had lost his vision, his passion for what he does.  His lack of vision could also someday interrupt my breakfast, and I am not okay with that.

Self-Actualization

In the world of emotional intelligence, self-actualization is finding one's meaning and purpose in life. It is the willingness to persistently try to improve and engage in the pursuit of personally relevant and meaningful growth that will lead to a rich and enjoyable life. 

Someone who acts on the idea that what they are pursuing and involved in actually adds meaning and purpose is experiencing self-actualization. For some, it is that they feel they have more of a calling instead of just having a job. For others, what they do is an act of service that fulfills their destiny as human beings.  It is very much more than what they do, it is about the meaning and purpose they have in life and whom they serve. I think the reason behind the struggle some folks have is they have lost the link (or maybe it never existed) between who they are and what they do.

Let’s say, if you deliver pizza for a living, some of what you really are doing is feeding a hungry family or bringing joy to a group of people so that they can socially connect. But it is so easy to get lost in the idea that you are merely transporting a disc of dough with sauce and meat from a storefront to a house, and you have to do at least 100 of them in a night to make any decent money.

It is really easy for us to lose sight of what we do and become defined by our tasks rather than the bigger vision of who we serve. In the example above, you are not merely delivering pizza, my friend, you are feeding people and helping cement relational bonds with family and friends. 

Who You Serve 

Let’s really try to engage in what it is that you are doing with your life. Perhaps as a part of your mid-year review, you should be asking yourself who it is that you serve and how well you have done so.  Let go of defining yourself by WHAT you do and give some consideration to WHO you serve.  

The plant manager at the beginning of the blog post plays a critical role in getting component parts to people who need them. Without him and without his team, a poor schmuck like me would not have my frozen waffles in the morning for breakfast...may it never be so!

As a leader, have you lost sight of the vision and the passion for what you do? If so, the people on your team can usually sense this. You need to make sure that you show them your commitment.

Let's make sure the people on our teams and those around us have a clear vision of what they do and how it links to the people you all serve. This may help them rediscover their purpose and drive, benefitting everyone.

How Do You Solve This Leadership Problem?

Several years back, I had a fascinating conversation with a client who had an unusual problem. His organization was hiring for an upcoming position and the internal candidate was confident, driven, and articulate during the interview process. However, when he asked her to explain the different ways she’s handled “critical feedback,” she was silent. My client asked the same question in a different way and framed the query with how she normally handled “personal development opportunities.” Still no answer.

He even used an example of something he had observed in their workplace interactions and it still didn’t induce a clear answer on her part.

He was puzzled, and I could see why.

What are the best practices for a leader to implement in order to help someone see their personal weaknesses, and at the same time see their potential areas for development? 

Here are some ideas of what may be happening when your team member can’t seem to see their own development opportunities:

1. Lack of self-awareness.  They don’t know themselves enough to receive constructive feedback and how to process the information. A lack of self-awareness is actually quite common in leadership development. Self-awareness means understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the leader and the effect these have on others in different situations and contexts.

2. Poor listener.  Even though my client asked the same question in different ways, it is possible that the woman didn't understand what was being asked. In any dialogue, there are three conversations happening. The first is between the two participants, and the other two conversations are the ones that each participant is having within themselves. If their interior monologue has a “higher volume” than the verbal conversation, active listening is not happening. The conversation energy ends up being internal, going toward preparing what to say next when the other person stops talking.

3. Arrogance. It is common for leadership literature to call this arrogance. Other common descriptions are pride or being so self-absorbed that previous feedback rolled off their backs. In this particular case, it seems like the woman heard the feedback, but she rejected it.

4. Omniscience. A high level of knowledge is often seen as a positive quality in a leader, as knowledge and experience are valuable commodities. However, a leader who believes they are all-knowing can be on a slippery slope.

5. Lack of self-regard. Self-regard is the ability to be able to accept yourself for who you are. It is the appreciation for your positive attributes and your perceived negative traits, while still feeling good about yourself. With my client’s interviewee, it was possible that her personal view of self was so low or distorted, that admitting any fault would have appeared as weakness.

As leaders, it is vital we learn how to receive critical feedback.

It is also important to capitalize on any potential personal growth opportunities. So, how are you doing on answering the question, “What is your personal development opportunity”? or “How do you solve this leadership problem?”

Give these inquiries full breadth and stretch yourself a bit. Get honest with yourself and ask, "What do I need to work on that will allow me to be a more effective leader?"

5 Questions Every Leader Needs to Ask Themselves and Reflect On

How good are you at spending time in purposeful reflection?

This is a question I ask a lot of the leaders that I coach. The reason I ask about purposeful reflection is that I think leaders are fairly good at reflecting because they are constantly seeing things differently in their own heads than maybe their employees.

For example, I had a client who was working on a review of the talent in her organization. She spent a lot of time reflecting on the individuals that she was representing. However, she spent almost no time intentionally reflecting on her own overall outcome or any of the biases that she might have experienced when going through the talent review process. 

I think it is fair to say that many of us are good at reflecting on the work in front of us, but maybe not so good at critical reflection on the processes we went through to make the work happen. There are not many of us who spend time on this. And I get it. 

Those of us in leadership development have spent way too much time working with leaders on obtaining good outcomes and not nearly enough time helping other people think about their processes.  We have encouraged you to go from “good to great,” to be “innovative,” and to “work from your strengths.” But what we haven’t given you are tools to purposefully reflect on how you are showing up as a leader.

A leadership guru, Gary Yulk, wrote that “to facilitate favorable learning environments in organizations, leaders must act as a role model”.

Have you thought much about that? Do you see yourself as a role model?  What does that even mean for you and how you are impacting those on your team? Are you one who encourages your team to have a good work/life balance but sends emails at 5 pm on Saturday evenings and 9 am on Sunday mornings?  

Role models set the tone and the pace for those they work with.

Some of you might be saying, “Well I want the people on my team to work hard. I need to make sure they are always really engaged.”

Dan Goleman, in his book Primal Leadership, calls out this “pacesetting” style as dissonant. The problem, according to Goldman, is that you will likely burn out people on your team if you push them to work too hard.  If you don’t burn them out, you will run them down so much that they will lose energy to be able to give you any kind of extra effort when it is needed. 

Here are those five other bias questions that leaders can be influenced by and some additional questions that you can spend some intentional time reflecting on:

1. Confirmation Bias? Seeking out proof that will confirm what you already think or believe.  Are you working on a project or with a team and unduly influencing them to show you something that you already believe is true? What do you need to do to eliminate this bias from a project you are currently working on?

2. Hindsight Bias? The belief that the past was more accurate and predictable than it really was. How old is the data you are using to form your opinions of people on your team? I have a client who made a mistake several years ago. Although he has had many successes since then, he is still in a “penalty box” for that error. Are there people in your organization you need to forgive because you are putting too much emphasis on errors that may have happened a long time ago?

3. Gender Bias? A widely held set of implicit biases that discriminate against gender. Let's say a female in your organization gets really intense in a meeting. You think about the situation and come to a private conclusion that “when under pressure, women get emotional.” Anytime we use all-inclusive language about an individual we are showing a bias. Step back and think about what happened to her at that moment and consider maybe why she got emotional. Then apply the same standard to one of the guys on your team. If he gets emotional, does he get credit because he is passionate? How might you take gender bias out of your thinking as you work with talent on your team?

4. Anchoring Bias? Relying heavily on an initial piece of information or a data point that unduly influences your decisions and thought processes. “Do you remember that guy we hired from a competitor 5 years ago? He was a total washout.” Do you use comments like this that influence your thoughts and feelings today? Does this one situation anchor all of your thoughts on hiring competitors? How could you look at each individual without labels and find the good in what they are bringing to the table no matter what their work history might be?

5. Available Thought Bias? Your decision is influenced by what springs first into your mind. I witness this a lot in leaders. They tend to fall in love with the first thing that comes out of their mouths. This comes from pride and the feeling that we need to defend an idea just because we said it. This one happened to me one day in a meeting. I was asked my opinion and gave it, but then felt like if I didn’t defend it I would be seen as not having a take on the topic. So I ended up defending something I was not even really that passionate about.  How might you overcome pride, admit you were wrong, and agree with someone who had a better idea than you?

take some time today or this week to pause and reflect on how these biases might be affecting your leadership.

As you reflect, I encourage you to forgive yourself. We all have biases - we can’t help it. Our brains are association-making machines. They fill in blanks to make reality from things that may or may not be there. Realizing we all have biases is the first step to better team outcomes.