Leadership

“Shelley, I’ve had this ring for a while.”  She took it off her finger and showed me.  “I gave this to myself as a gift after I completed a really big climb.” I looked down.  It was a simple silver ring with a mountain scene carved into it.  I said nothing in reply.  I was still trying to catch my breath. “Inside I had it engraved,” she said.  As she held it up, I could see the etching in the sunlight. “Inside it says – ‘We do not conquer the mountain, we conquer ourselves’.” I choked back the tears and looked away.  Luckily, I was already at the back the group, where none of the other hikers could see me.  And I thought to myself, now it begins… —————– Every 4-5 years I take what I often refer to as my spiritual pilgrimage.  The first one was Kilimanjaro.  The second was the high passes around Everest.  I pick something insanely hard that requires deep physical exertion and then I go off, by myself, on a guided expedition with other hikers I’ve never met before.  Why do I do it, I’m not really sure.  I’ve found that at these times I’m usually searching for something.  Maybe I’m searching for meaning.  Maybe searching for inspiration.  Often at these times I’m at a crossroads in my life and wondering what the next challenge or direction should be.  There’s something magical that happens when you put your body through an extreme test.  At least for me.  Your mind switches off.  The experience forces you to get into your body in a different way.  To become more present to it.  To become aware of it.  To learn to rely on it.  Things seem simpler, less complicated.  The stories and lies we tell ourselves fall away on the trail.  The only thing that really matters at that moment is pushing yourself to keep going.  To take step after another painful step. The other thing that often falls away is ego.  In that moment when Cindy showed me her ring, it annihilated what was left of mine.  I had sized her up earlier in the day, I looked to be in better shape.  I’d done more challenging hikes in the past – mind you it was the very distant past.  But still.  I should have been crushing day 2.  And instead, I was the caboose.  With more and more distance opening between me and the rest of my group no matter how hard I pushed myself.  The shame was rising in my cheeks.  But I just couldn’t go any faster.  I hadn’t trained enough.  I had assumed my base level of fitness would carry me through, and it wasn’t. The importance of pain in cultivating humble leadership The physical world can teach us so many important lessons.  I talk a good talk about humility and cultivating humble leadership or servant leadership.  It comes up all the time in leadership sessions.  Just yesterday I was talking about the […]

The last few weeks have been tumultuous ones, and I’ve been shying away from writing this blog, waiting for things to settle.  It’s the space that often brings the insight.  And it’s starting to emerge, where I can now come up for a little bit of air and reflect on the last few weeks.  The last month or so has been a powerful opportunity for me to lean into conflict.  It’s not my favorite thing to do.  Many of us really struggle with conflict, it’s one of the top topics that comes up in coaching sessions with my clients, and I’ve been hit with it from all sides lately – on the family front, on the business front and even on the friendship front. I think at times we go through tumultuous periods, it’s part of the wonderful and annoying mystery of life – it’s an amazing reminder that we’re obviously not in control and life is full of ebbs and flows.  I can feel a lot of things shifting in my life as I have grown as a coach, as a leader, as a wife, and the bottom line is that often the status quo behaviors that we have become accustomed to cease to work with new levels of awareness.  Relationships may fall away as you outgrow them.  Advocating for ourselves in different ways, asserting new boundaries or expectations might create tension as we work to negotiate new agreements. What is the conflict trying to teach you? The question I often ask myself in times of conflict is – What can I learn from this experience?  How can I grow?  Sometimes it’s super hard to see the silver lining on the conflict cloud, especially when we don’t get the outcome we were hoping for.  Maybe a cherished friendship comes to an end.  Maybe a business relationship comes to an end.  There could be sadness, disappointment and grief on the other side of conflict.  These emotions are scary, and we often try to avoid them. When I ponder these potential outcomes, maybe conflict is an opportunity to experience these darker emotions, to really feel them, and to learn to live with them.  Maybe it’s an opportunity to go deeper into ourselves and recognize the pieces of us that need to heal.  Maybe it’s an opportunity to learn how to communicate with the people we care about more effectively.  Or all of the above. I’ll turn to the situation about my family.  I’ve been navigating a tricky situation with several family members where an inheritance is concerned.  Tensions have flared.  Hidden agendas have been uncovered that have resulted in a lack of trust and prevented open and honest conversations.  The conflict is often not about the surface issue The interesting thing about family is the presenting issue is often not what the conflict is really about.  Still waters and root causes often run deep.  We’re not talking about huge sums of money.  We’re not talking about large tracts of land.  There’s […]

A lot of my coaching clients struggle with boundaries.  I suppose it takes one to know one.  Like any good co-dependent, it’s the area I’ve probably had to do the most work on. I’ve gotten considerably better at managing boundaries over the years, which has resulted in managing expectations with clients more effectively, as I’m much more upfront about what the role of a coach is and isn’t and have worked hard to not take responsibility for my coaching clients’ learning and growth.  It’s improved family relationships and friendships, as I’ve gotten clearer on what healthy relationships look like, and as a result, no longer spend a lot of time obsessing about things or trying to control things that can’t be controlled.  And then every once in a while, I get triggered.  It’s inevitable; it happens to us all.  And it happened to me the other day when I was asked by a colleague to help them out on something they need to learn to take responsibility for themselves.  Normally I would have let the guilt push me into saying yes. But something interesting happened instead. I got visibly mad, and I found myself stomping around my office and complaining to my husband.  I got mad because I value fairness and accountability and always strive to be the kind of person who takes her fair share of the load.  I got even madder because I’ve noticed a pattern of this individual playing the victim and manipulating others in the spirit of “collaboration” to get them to step in on a moment’s notice and bail them out.  I was mad at her, and I think I was also mad from a cumulative effect of this behavior – over the course of my career I’ve often felt obligated to step in and save the day for others who I have judged (rightly or wrongly) to be stupid, lazy, weak or selfish.  I’ve felt like I had no choice but to help, and inadvertently built up a pool of smoldering resentment, as I erred to compromise myself and my values rather than risk being branded as unhelpful. Look under the guilt and anger, what’s the underlying need? Experience has taught me there’s normally something we need to look at within ourselves when we experience such a visceral reaction.  And the interesting thing about anger is there’s normally something sitting under it that’s begging to be healed.  So I looked. And then I looked some more.  And then I realized what this was really about.  It was really about approval.  We often confuse manipulation with collaboration And then I remembered a 360 I had done a long time ago, a couple of years after I had moved into leadership development.  My colleagues had provided anonymous feedback.  Their perception of me wasn’t stellar – I was completely focused on task and results, with no room for relationship.   And I prioritized my goals and deliverables above everything else.  It was a blindspot. I was so desperate […]

Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive.  Charlotte Jojo Beck I came across this quote the other day and it caused me to really pause and think.  As human beings, we tend to look at joy as something that’s attained once we’ve completed a series of steps.  I see this a lot in my coaching practice.  I’ll have joy when I get this promotion.  I’ll be able to tap into joy when I no longer work for this horrible boss, or when I feel more confident in my skillset.  I’ll have joy once I understand what my purpose and my true path on earth really is and have a plan for making it happen. It’s not wrong to seek change, to want to grow or to want to improve our circumstances.  The problem is in thinking that “fix” alone will solve the problem of not having enough joy in our lives.  Our mental construct often frames joy as something we must earn.  The truth is joy is accessible now – in our imperfect lives, our imperfect careers, our imperfect leadership, our imperfect team and family dynamics.  The issue is that we can’t often access it because we’re too busy blaming ourselves or others for the perceived problems in our lives. Forgiveness is often an inside job Beck’s quote speaks to the path we need to take to access what’s already available to us.  And more often than not, the person we need to forgive the most is ourselves. Forgiveness is about letting go of the protective armor Or maybe anger and resentment is projected outwards at the people around us.  We find ourselves locked into judgment and blame of others for the things they have done to us.  The things we have been subjected to – unfair expectations, abuse, trauma, bad leadership, bullying, being taken advantage of.  The list could go on and on.  Perhaps it shows up as passive aggressiveness or full blown aggressiveness with others.  Or maybe avoidance.  Forgiveness begins with the intention to let go of the armor of blame and defensiveness and a willingness to touch the vulnerability that sits underneath the anger.  Perhaps it’s the shame of having been humiliated publicly.  Or of having been abandoned and feeling isolated and unwanted.  Or the regret and shame of not standing up for ourselves with a difficult person.  When we can face that vulnerability and meet it with compassion and love for ourselves, we find ourselves on a much more joyful path.     For a long time, I carried a lot of anger and resentment about a previous work situation.  It was years ago, when I had just transitioned my career, and found myself in a situation where I had been set up to fail.  It wasn’t until I really leaned into the feeling that was sitting under the anger – humiliation, and allowed myself to feel it without trying to push it away, that I could let it go.  […]

This is a question that often gets batted around during leadership training sessions.  And to answer it, I often share the results of a Google study called Project Aristotle, which was completed a few years back.  It’s often surprising learning for a lot of leaders, because the key finding was that what matters the most for team effectiveness is less about who is on the team, and more about how the team works together.  Or in other words, when it comes to high performing teams, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This isn’t to say that technical competency isn’t important.  Obviously, people have to have the right level of skill and competency to be able to do the job they’re in.  But having the brightest and best technical experts doesn’t necessarily equate to success.  We see this often in sports – the teams that are typically the most successful in making it to the championship are the ones the work the most effectively together, not just the ones that have the biggest and brightest stars. So the bottom line is that cherry picking a group of A players won’t necessarily translate into success. So all this begs the question – If it’s not so much about who is on the team, how do you build a high performing team?  Here’s what the Project Aristotle analysis found, and it boils down to 4 key components: Psychological safety The belief in a team that it is safe to speak up, share opinions and make mistakes.  Is your team environment one where only a few voices dominate, where ideas get dismissed, ridiculed, or shot down?  Are mistakes penalized with blaming or shaming language?  Or maybe there’s an unspoken power dynamic, where folks are jockeying for position.  All of these are signs that your team lacks psychological safety, and as the leader, you set the tone for what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. Accountability To what extent are roles and responsibilities clear in your department?   Are they documented and current?  When you delegate a task, how clear are you on the outcome to be achieved and on what your expectations for success are?  As a coach, I hear all the time about situations where a coaching client delegated a task, only to end up with a pile of crap on their desk a week later.  It’s not enough just to tell someone to do something – a good accountability conversation is one where the manager is clear about expectations and confirms that understanding in the conversation.  Are you having regular performance conversations where you give feedback on what’s working and what could be better, or are you avoiding tackling poor performance? Meaning and purpose This isn’t a nice to have or an airy-fairy thing.  The bottom line is that human beings are ultimately motivated by something greater than just a paycheck.  And this is critical in the context of high performing teams, because in these types of teams folks routinely […]

It’s inevitable that from time to time we may find ourselves disillusioned, maybe even feeling burnt out.  And there is a load of content out there that speaks to self-care, how to maintain balance through practices like yoga and meditation amid all the stress, and it’s all very wonderful.  I’m a big believer in all kinds of mindfulness practices.  But I’ve often said that a good self-care routine won’t do the job of an unhealthy mindset. I was reminded of this principle this week as I was working with a client.  She’s sleepwalking through each day of life – tired, lethargic, devoid of a sense of purpose, and it was the latter of these complaints we honed in on for our work.  A good self care routine won’t do the job of an unhealthy mindset “This project is painstaking work.  And the only thing that matters is whether I make a mistake.  It’s exhausting.” That would feel exhausting, right?  Her story reminded me of another client, an organization I spent quite a bit of time with a year back.  One of the high potential new recruits had been promoted to the supervisor of the loan processing department for a bank.  Her work as an individual contributor was excellent without a doubt – painstakingly perfect.  And when you think about it, that’s probably a good thing considering we’re talking about the practice of processing loans.  Money is riding on whether the documentation has been completed correctly.  One error can derail an entire process and create unnecessary delays.  This individual had performed well in the past, and then had been thrown into a leadership role without any training or development. When I met up with this client a year or so into her new role, it wasn’t the rosy story of success she’d wanted it to be.  The turnover in her department was sky high, and no one (and I mean no one) in the bank wanted to work in the loan processing group.  The group had a reputation for being difficult to work with interdepartmentally as well.  But it wasn’t for lack of trying on the supervisor’s part.  She was working her butt off and giving her best.  And yet, she couldn’t keep a good employee if her life depended on it. What we focus on drives the outcomes we get The solution to this conundrum lies not in how hard we work or try, but what we’re focused on.  This supervisor tended to be critical, and it showed up in what she focused on with her team.  Instead of focusing on the vibe she wanted to create for the department and what a high performing team could look like, she focused with laser precision on mistakes and the tiniest of errors.  And she found them, again and again and again.  Well intended folks would come to work day after day to be told again and again that they had made yet another mistake.  They were told to correct it.  And […]