From Overcrowded Living to Personal Balance and Excellence - part #2

THEME: Spring 2010 From Vision to Action Roundtable Report

FOCUS: From Overcrowded Living to Personal Balance and Excellence - part #2

Monday morning: June 14, 2010

Dear friends,

Too many people in too many companies are living an overcrowded lifestyle and hoping it will change. As they say down south, those who only talk about going to heaven usually don’t. The same goes for those who only talk about changing their life. They usually don’t. As Stephen Covey said many years ago, you can’t talk your way out of something that you are behaving your way into.

Here are two lessons I have learned from executive coaching many people this past winter into spring. First, focus less on motivation and more on inspiration. Motivation is something that causes a person to act. Sometimes it is fear and sometimes it is clarity. Sometimes, we are not even sure why we do what we are doing. Inspiration on the other hand is something that causes a person to want to move forward rather than have to move forward. It comes from the inside rather than from the outside. Given all that has happened in the last 12 - 18 months, I believe we need more inspiration and less motivation.

Second, we need to learn to manage our energy, not our time. As Marcus Buckingham wrote in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005, “What differentiated the best [tennis players] from the rest was not what happened during the points, but rather what happened between the points. The best had faster and more effective recovery routines.... Stress itself is not the enemy we typically think it is. Uninterrupted stress is.” There are days right now when a good number of leaders need to learn how to give themselves permission to rest, recharge, and rejuvenate. We are so addicted to living in go mode that we do not know how to actually rest.

Third, we all need to redefine our non-negotiables. For me, there came a point in the growth of my business where I could have started doing more and more weekend workshops related to stress management and then leadership. With young children moving into school related activities, a wise friend reminded me that your teenage children will need you more than when they were young. The only challenge is that they will need you to be available when they are ready, not when you are always ready. Recognizing this truth, I came to a decision that I needed to no longer do any weekend workshops. I needed to be home starting on Friday night through to Monday morning. I lost business due to this decision, but I learned from another mentor of mine that you only get to raise children once and you can raise flowers twice.

This week, reduce your level of uninterrupted stress and give yourself permission to rest and recharge.

Have a marvelous week,

Geery

P.S. Given the first day of summer begins in a week, I am going to follow my own advice and rest for a while from writing my weekly Monday Thoughts. I will be back in touch with all of you in the later half of the summer. Meanwhile you can always find past 2009 Monday Thoughts Weekly e-mails on our web site:

http://www.chartyourpath.com/Monday-Thoughts-Archive.html

or here on my blog:

http://chartyourpath.blogspot.com

Enjoy the summer!

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

From Overcrowded Living to Personal Balance and Excellence - part #1

THEME: Spring 2010 From Vision to Action Roundtable Report

FOCUS: From Overcrowded Living to Personal Balance and Excellence - part #1

Monday afternoon: June 7, 2010

Dear friends,

Recently, I have been working with a young woman executive who is being prepared for senior leadership within her company. We visit on a regular basis and explore critical issues on a deep level. Recently, she explained to me that her life was already full. With children and a working husband, her reality was living busy, drained and overwhelmed all day and every day. She said to me “being a senior leader is just going to be more rather than different.”

I explained to her that there are two stages in life. One is called before children and the other is after children. For all the books, workshops, advice and counsel we are given, when we live in the land of before children, we can never fully comprehend the land of after children. What is theory on one level quickly changes when it becomes reality.

Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned from others who have traveled the road before us to senior leadership. The first two lessons comes from Peter Drucker who wrote in an article called “What is Our Business?” from the June 2001 issue of Executive Excellence magazine. As he explained, “The executive’s time tends to belong to everybody else.” He notes that everybody and anybody can move in on your time and eventually does when you become a senior executive. Second, “Executives are forced to keeping “operating” unless they take positive action to change the reality in which they live.” As he reminds us, we can let the flow of events determine the priorities we hold or we can define what is important in spite of the flow.

The next lessons learned comes from Margaret J. Wheatley from her book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, Berrett-Koehler, 2005. Here, she explains that “... humans usually default to the known when confronted with the unknown,” and “new leaders must invent the future while dealing with the past.” Both are excellent observations.

However, living busy, drained and overwhelmed is not living well and not the goal of most people. This past winter into spring the most common question I got asked by people who had moved into a senior level position is the following: How do I find a sense of balance? The real answer is difficult but important to digest. The long and short of it is that you will not be able to achieve personal balance in the sense that everything will equal out when you become a senior executive. There are days when you will have way more work than time and way more family expectations than time. It comes with the power of the chair and the territory.

Still, there are solutions. First, now is the time to move from a focus on success to significance. Rather than striving for the next rung on the ladder and more external definitions of success, realize that the best place to start living a more healthy lifestyle as a senior executive is to rediscover what gives your life meaning and to schedule time for this on your calendar. As Stephen Covey reminded us many years ago, when we put first things first, then we have time for the people and events we want to focus on.

This week, rediscover what gives your life meaning and make time for it on a regular basis.

Much joy to you and yours,

Geery

P.S. For those who enjoyed the following book: Loehr, Jim & Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Simon & Schuster, 2003, the author, Tony Schwartz, has a new article out, a summary of his new book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Nees That Energize Great Performance, The Free Press, 2010, in the June 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review called “The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less”. As he explains, “Human beings don’t work like computers; they can’t operate at high speeds continuously, running multiple programs at once.” Instead, he explains that “people perform at their peak when they alternate between periods of intense focus and intermittent renewal.” The key to success according to Schwartz is the following: “Employees can increase their effectiveness by practicing simple rituals that refuel their energy, such as taking a daily walk to get an emotional breather or turning off e-mail at prescribed times so they can concentrate.” Furthermore, he notes that “if companies allow and encourage employees to create and stick to such rituals, they will be rewarded with a more engaged, productive, and focused workforce.” When you have the time, check out the article and if it speaks to your condition, then check out the new book, too.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

Improving Organizational Communication

THEME: Spring 2010 From Vision to Action Roundtable Report

FOCUS: Improving Organizational Communication

Tuesday morning: June 1, 2010

Dear friends,

With many organizations moving faster and faster at the tactical and strategic levels, communications is suffering. When this happens, we need to remember the first three disciplines from Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, Jossey-Bass, 2000, as we solve this problem. They are as follows:

- Discipline One: Build and Maintain A Cohesive Leadership Team

- Discipline Two: Create Organizational Clarity

- Discipline Three: Over-communicate Organizational Clarity

If we seek a realistic solution to improved communication, then we need to create organizational clarity and over-communicate it. The first step is to remember Marcus Buckingham’s comments about fear in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005. Here, he outlined the “Five Fears” we all share. The first is our fear of death, our own and our family’s. Leaders work with this fear by recognizing our need for security. The second is our fear of the outsider which can be resolved by the development of community. The third is our fear of the future which can be eased by an organization having a clear sense of direction. The fourth fear is the fear of chaos which recognizes our desire as people for sound leadership, and the need for someone to make the right decisions. The final fear is the fear of insignificance. We solve this one by recognizing our desire to want to know that our work is making a difference. As Buckingham constantly points out, when you want to manage, begin with the person; when you want to lead, begin with the picture of where you are headed.

Not too long ago, I was invited to lunch with two exceptional women executives. We met at a restaurant and they encouraged me to order first. Being born wet and hungry, I ordered up a plate full of slow burning protein and complex carbs plus a house salad. They each ordered a glass of water with lemon and half a salad. Once my embarrassment about ordering so much had passed, they shared with me that they were struggling with communications at the senior team level. They could not figure out what the problem was but thought that a communications workshop would be helpful. As we talked about what was happening, I discovered that the main problem mostly resolved around a senior leader sending mixed signals and those listening not being able to generate a clear picture of the future.

In particular, when we communicate, it is essential that we are clear about what we are communicating and what we are expecting. For example, many issues are brought up at the senior team level but the individual who surfaces these issues is not clear about whether or not they are sharing information for input, seeking consultation before a decision, wanting help to coordinate different parts of the strategy, or communicating a decision that has already been made. We, at times, forget that what is evident to a leader may or may not be evident to a follower or colleague. Therefore, it is time to clarify and/or explain the obvious.

This week clarify inside your own head first what you are trying to say and why before you open your mouth.

Have a delightful week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257