Every Thursday, we provide you with a thoughtful way to coach yourself – something all leaders need to do. Today we feature a quote from Wally Bock, whose Three Star Leadership Blog is a bastion of common sense advice and commentary for leaders. It was one of the first blogs I started reading and commenting on. Anyone interested in supervision, management, and leadership can’t go wrong with his writing.

So take five and enjoy the inspirational quote and reflect on the questions that follow. Your comments and answers to the questions are always welcome!

I think that one of the best ways to learn leadership isn’t studying “leadership” at all. Instead, study individual leaders in their natural habitat and decide what they do that you want to try. ~Wally Bock

• What leader do you most admire?
  
• What behaviors does that leader exhibit that you appreciate?
  
  • Is there a particular behavior that you would like to have more of?
    
  • What are you willing to try? How will you start?
    

Some of us remember the days when we were excited about the possibilities for technology to save us time. Personal computers, cell phones, and the internet allowed us to have access to any information wherever we were, and allowed others access to us whenever they needed. We really believed that that all of this connectivity would make us more efficient.

However, the reality turned out to be very different than we expected. Today, we’re experiencing the real outcome of all of our electronic connectivity with 24 hours availability and weekends, vacations, and holidays included.

While you are expected to be “on call” for work, the speed with which our workplaces need to make decisions and take action is increasing as we globalize and face more competition. Long days of working for months at a time make us more vulnerable to stress, burnout, and illness.

Meanwhile life “happens” in other areas of our lives too. When there are problems at home, we bring them with us to work. Have you noticed that when a co-worker is up against problems outside of work, it often influences their ability to do be at their best at work? Perhaps you live with someone who is stressed at work –and their inability to deal with that strain well is affecting your relationship. It just isn’t possible to completely separate our work and our non-work lives.

The solutions to staying at our best in all areas of life are simple in theory – yet hard to do. The trick is to make it all work together in your favor so you can always function at your peak in any of the roles you play at work or outside of work.

The phrase “work-life synergy” seems a more attainable goal than the common phrase “work-life balance” in our always-on, 24 hour world. The word synergy implies that there aren’t separate parts of our lives. Indeed, when we have synergy, we are free to imagine a life that becomes holistic because what was once a “balance” between those parts in a seamless whole to achieve something greater than before.

Through the work I’ve done with hundreds of senior leaders who are under a great deal of pressure in all areas of their life, I’ve found a few simple practices can help them to attain synergy:

Boundaries: Learning what to say “no” to should be a required lesson in school. Many of us have a tendency to avoid priority setting. We take on too much which only put us further behind.

Take a moment every day (for most people, this will be at the start of their day) to list everything you need to do. From that list, figure out what’s really important to accomplish that day, make those things a priority, and eliminate the others – or at least put them at the bottom of the list. Be sure to leave room in your list for the “urgent and important” activities that pop up that you can’t plan for. For many, scheduling a few minutes every day to do this can make a world of difference.

Sleep, eat, exercise: It might sound strange that a conversation around these topics would occur with senior leaders around their work performance. However, time and again I’ve noticed that when someone assures that they get enough rest, eat healthy foods, and schedule regular exercise, their performance in all areas of their life improves, resulting in their ability to accomplish more with greater ease.

To begin, find one of these areas where you know you can improve, and begin slowly. If you know you can eat healthier, add a piece of fruit to your diet every day, give up unhealthy snacks, or drink more water. If you need to get exercise, start with fifteen minutes a day; you can work up to more exercise time later. I would argue that even a small amount of daily exercise is better than none at all. Developing healthy habits happens as you do these things regularly; over time, they become a part of your day without much effort.

Schedule play time: Work, even when we love what we do, can be a burn-out when it is the major focus of our lives. Some of the busiest people I know make sure that they schedule the time they need for family, friends and other activities – and they don’t allow work to interfere with those plans.

Variety in our lives affects all areas of our being in a positive way. When you make sure you have time for play, you’ll be more effective at work too. Remember to turn off the smart phone during your play time and take all of the vacation that the company provides to you.

The bottom line is that it’s a fallacy to think you don’t have time to do the things that allow you to improve at work and outside of work. The better you become at setting boundaries, becoming healthier, and allowing yourself some time to play, the more energy you’ll have resulting in greater efficiency (and enjoyment!) in all areas of your life.

Reprinted with permission from Welsh & Associates Newsletter

Tap. Tap. Tap. Someone is knocking on your office door. You look up and welcome one of your best and most productive managers. You notice that she is carrying a monkey with her. It clings to her and it looks familiar. The monkey is slowly loosening its’ grip and beginning to reach for you as your employee tells you that she has a problem and is stuck. She wants you to fix the problem for her.

You like problem solving.

You tell the employee you will take care of the problem for her (or maybe you just tell her how to fix the problem), and you watch her walk out of your office. You think about how good it feels to help someone.

Wait a minute….you feel something clinging to you! That problem-monkey was handed to you, and you’ll be feeding and caring for it for some time. As days, weeks, and months go by, you notice that you are collecting, caring, and feeding for more and more monkeys as you help your staff to solve their work problems. You’re feeling burdened, heavy. You want some relief.

How do you spell relief?

Relief is on the way. Its spelled c-o-a-c-h-i-n-g. We sometimes think of coaching as something that we do in large chunks of time and only in discussions around our staff’s development. Yet, coaching can happen in small snippets when someone taps on your door, sends an email, or calls you for help. They are bringing that monkey to you, and they are anxious for you to adopt, feed and care for it.

When you see that monkey, instead of taking responsibility for it, hand it back by asking:

What ideas have you had so far that will solve this?

Have you asked others what they would do?

What action do you need to take?

How will you start? When will you start?

After these questions, now you can ask, “How can I help?” with the intention to remove barriers to success that your employees can’t remove themselves.

It will take a great deal of strength to keep from solving other’s problems; its been your habit for a long time, and you like it. But really, it’s not the best thing for you or for your staff.

The reason you give the monkey back

The best help that you can give your staff is by helping them to think through solutions and to eventually learn to solve them without you. And that takes some real courage, because we all like monkeys and we all like to help. But we don’t want them to cling and stay with us forever. So give the monkey back by helping others to solve their own problems. It will help your staff to grow, and it will provide you with some relief.

Every Thursday, we provide you with a thoughtful way to coach yourself – something all leaders need to do. Today we feature a quote from Lolly Daskal, who hosts the amazing TweetChat called #LeadFromWithin every Tuesday at 8:00 pm EST (which you are welcome to join) and authors a thoughtful blog about leadership. Lolly is a professional and a dedicated example of heart-based leadership.

So take five and enjoy the inspirational quote and reflect on the questions that follow. Your comments and answers to the questions are always welcome!

In order to live a life of leadership and meaningful connection, we have to consciously choose to slow down, give up our own agenda, and develop the capacity to focus on others by making an effort to fully understand them. ~Lolly Daskal

• What does it mean to you to live a life of meaningful connection?
  
• What will it take for you to make a conscious choice to slow down and develop relationships with others?
  
• When you listen – really listen – to others, what do you hear? What do you understand?
  

In some deep recess inside, I am a biologist. It’s where I started my career, and it continues to be a part of my way of seeing the world. I watch a lot of nature shows, especially the ones with animals in them that we don’t normally get to see in our backyard. I find that if I stretch my thinking a bit, the world we live in could be seen a lot like the natural world where the stronger, bigger animals prey on the weaker, smaller ones.

In the corporate jungle, I occasionally meet the leader who sees themselves as the prey (victim) of a lot of things that they feel are “out there” and out of their control. They see those things as stronger and bigger than they are as a way of coping with something they don’t want to deal with (often for legitimate reasons!). Here are some of the things that might just keep you in a victim mindset:

• The boss who doesn’t see you as capable of doing great work
  
• The employees who aren’t performing up to your standards
  
• The colleague who is critical of your work and “just doesn’t get it”
  
• The organization that’s failing because they aren’t doing it the way you would
  
• The strategy that isn’t perfect
  
• The vision that is flawed
  
• The partner who doesn’t listen
  
• The children who are unruly
  
• Etc…..
  

Do you see yourself in any of these? Perhaps there is something else out there that is getting in the way of your magnificence? What have you assumed is holding you back from being everything you could be? The list could go on, but all of these things (and anything else that you feel victimized by) are not the problem. The problem is that you have made a (perhaps almost unconscious) decision to be the victim.

Turn it around

What would you assume if you weren’t assuming those things I listed? Some examples:

• I will have a dialog with the boss and raise the bar on my performance based on his input
  
• I will roll up my shirtsleeves and coach the employees to perform better
  
• I will spend some time with that colleague to help them to understand my work
  
• I will speak up to the people responsible for the failure about other ways to do things
  
• I will provide input to change the strategy
  
• I will recreate the vision
  
• I will respectfully ask my partner to listen to me (and I can listen better to my partner as well)
  
• I will take a more active role in parenting my children to be better behaved
  
• Etc…..
  

It’s up to you. Every day, you choose to be a victim or a leader. Take a hard look at yourself, and notice where you’ve placed blame. You can be the victim or you can take an active role in turning things around. You’ll be a better leader for it.

There is a guided meditation I’ve used with groups and individuals that literally helps them to imagine roots growing out of their feet into the ground. One of the purposes of this exercise is to help people feel “grounded”, i.e. stable, back to their “roots” and better able to withstand the corrupting forces of losing touch with reality.

It’s true that power can corrupt. In the shift to having the ability to exercise more control as you rise to the top, you must find ways to avoid the self-deception that comes with the lure of the immoral and unethical.

Slowly, unethical, immoral or just plain unpleasant behaviors (like being out of touch, in denial, a know-it-all) can creep in. You may not recognize it, but when these things happen, you’ve lost your roots. You’ve forgotten that it is a privilege and honor to be in a position of leadership.

What’s the secret?

Some leaders – the good ones – know this can happen. Perhaps you are one who is concerned about it happening to you. While the meditation exercise isn’t bad, you need some help now, and on ongoing basis. How can you stay grounded?

Know what you value and act on it: Many of the leaders I work with have memorized their top personal values. This helps them in tough decisions and sticky situations that aren’t as black and white as they’d like. Your values are an “anchor” for behavior that is ethical and moral; they can keep you on the right track. When you have a tough decision to make, ask yourself “What decision can I make that will keep me true to my value of XXXXXX?”.

Remember that work isn’t your whole life: Leave your cell phone at work and enjoy being present to some of the activities that remind you of your fallibility and humanity. Spend time with your family and in spiritual pursuits. Reconnect with things you love to do outside of work (sports, hobbies, nature). Volunteer for something that is very different from your everyday life (connect with children, or work at a soup kitchen). Try something new that really stretches your physical, intellectual, or emotional ability.

Surround yourself with stakeholders who will disagree with you (and then listen to them): Don’t isolate yourself and make decisions in a vacuum. Invite others into your thought processes and welcome their opposing views. Hire people who think differently than you do, and listen closely to their ideas. Make sure you balance your need to be the person that knows everything (because you can’t possibly) by understanding what others know.

Connect regularly with trusted and trustworthy friends and advisors: It’s important to have people you trust to connect with regularly – inside and outside of work. Just hanging around with good people can make a difference, but they can also provide the space you need to have confidential conversations to help you to stay grounded. Consider a mentor, a coach, friends and colleagues whom you trust.

Staying grounded is, in a way, staying human. Human leaders find ways to keep their roots.

What helps you to stay grounded?

Erika Andersen writes amazing books. My personal favorite is Being Strategic. If you don’t have a copy, you should. She has another in the works about leadership, which I’m excited about.

I met Erika through an introduction from Wally Bock (via social media) and we hit it off, as he thought we might. I interviewed her here a while back, and she asked if she could interview me. I could hardly wait to respond to her questions because they were so insightful; if she had asked me what questions I wanted asked, I couldn’t have done as well. They helped me to learn while I was responding (which, by the way, is what great questions do).

Please stop by her site today and read the interview called Helping Leaders to Balance Being and Doing.

If you have ever attended a professional classical or jazz music concert and really listened to the music, you know what a dialog can be like. The music has an ebb and flow that is beautiful to listen to. The musicians must stay close to the music, listening carefully for their cues. When each note is played, it is in keeping with the rhythm and the context of notes that come before it and bridges the way for the notes that follow. There are nuances and changes in the musical language that give special meaning to the listener. So it is with a form of conversation called dialog.

Dialog also has an ebb and flow and it requires the need to stay close to the words, inflection and tone of the conversation. There is a rhythm and ease in the language and interaction. Many of you may have experienced a dialog that created the kind of flow that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Dialog is a rare event in our modern organizations. Most often when we are speaking face to face with someone, it is a one-way conversation reminiscent of staccato in certain types of music: detached, abrupt, disjointed and disconnected.

It is radical

Dialog has an important place in your leadership. It can create the space where the important things that have been left unsaid get expressed. It’s the foundation for leading at a higher level than you’ve led before. It creates, solidifies, and sustains the relationships you need to support greatness in your organization.

However, dialog in the workplace is a radical act because:

It requires you to slow down, going against the pace of your work life.

It requires personal courage to avoid the tyranny of the urgent and the daily distractions you face.

It takes your undivided attention and your presence.

It isn’t considered of value and it isn’t rewarded in most organizations.

Dialog requires skill

Many of us aren’t hard-wired for dialog. It requires practice and skill development. William Isaacs, who wrote a lovely book called “Dialog and the Art of Thinking Together” says that in dialog, people are not only speaking together, they are creating together. According to Isaacs, in order to speak and create together, you must:

Listen to yourself and others without resistance and imposition;

Respect the integrity of another’s position;

Suspend your assumptions and judgment;

Speak your truth.

We all know that we need more of these things from the leaders in our organizations. Practice them. Start the dialog that needs to occur in your organization and watch music happen.

What’s one small step you can take to start a dialog today?

Every Thursday, we provide you with a thoughtful way to coach yourself – something all leaders need to do. Today we feature a quote from my friend Becky Robinson, whose Weaving Influence blog is a masterpiece of beautiful prose. I admire every turn of a phrase she writes. And lucky us; she sometimes writes about leadership (but I happen to think that all of her posts are about leadership).

So take five and enjoy the inspirational quote and reflect on the questions that follow. Your comments and answers to the questions are always welcome!

It is impossible to be actively involved in influencing others while remaining impassive. Leaders choose passion instead, pushing past fatigue and apathy to leverage their energy for the good of others. ~Becky Robinson in Weaving Influence

• What creates the circumstances for you to push past distractions and choose passion?
  
• What does it mean to be passionate about “the good of others” to you?
  
• How does passion inform, assist, collude and contribute to your being the best leader you can be?

A recent comment by a reader on an older post, “It Takes Time to Make Great Leaders” sparked my thinking about whether leaders can truly “practice” the soft skills involved in leading in a deliberate way. I began to wonder if I was drawing a parallel to the work of Benjamin Bloom and Geoff Colvin that was inappropriate. Or…perhaps I’m protecting my own way of making a living by helping leaders to practice soft skills, making me unable to see the truth (if there is any in this case).

Bloom’s work is the most historic of the two. As I stated in the post mentioned above:

“Dr.Bloom found that at least ten years of hard work (a minimum) was required for athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians to reach their peak.

Apparently, something called “deliberate practice” is also necessary during these ten years for the best people in any field to excel. This is a specific practice that stretches an individual beyond their level of competence, provides feedback on the experience, requires adjustment based on the feedback and is repeated until mastered. Lots of deliberate practice equals mastery.”

Skepticism and doubt

In a nutshell, the reader was skeptical about how a leader could deliberately practice the skills I mentioned (which were only a sample of a wide range of leadership skills: clarity in communication, setting a vision, influencing others, setting and achieving a strategy, patience and restraint, delegating effectively, giving and accepting feedback, testing their limits, creating and developing great teams – etc.) and get better at them, in the same way a baseball player might practice his swing, or a golfer his stroke.

It seems very clear to me, based on the many leaders I’ve worked with, that when leaders are able to deliberately practice these skills, they can and do get better at them in measurable ways.

I have seen measurable results using the methodology. Does it take ten years to pull all of these skills together to make a great leader? It likely depends on the context, the leader’s baseline skills in these areas, their passion for improving them, the support they receive, and a whole host of other circumstances.

I admit that if it is ever proven that leaders can’t deliberately practice and get better at leading, as someone who believes that “leaders are made”, I’ll feel that all is lost. In our increasingly complex and chaotic world, we need leaders who can continually change and take on new skills. If that doesn’t happen, there isn’t hope that the leaders of the future will be able to rise to the circumstances they find themselves in and make our organizations a better place.

What do you think? If you are an organizational leader, what deliberate practice have you experienced, and how has it assisted you to stretch and become a better leader? If you are a coach or a consultant, what have you observed in the leaders you coach?