Brio Leadership

In my “Greetings” post, I introduced the concept of daily mindfulness habits of exceptional leaders. I promised to provide you with the rest of the article. You can find all three sections here:

• Mindfulness Practices for Busy Leaders: Part One
• Mindfulness Practices for Busy Leaders: Part Two
• Mindfulness Practices for Busy Leaders: Part Three

This month, however, I was inspired to write about a completely different topic. In this month’s post, I muse about the challenges of being both a visionary and tactical leader all at the same time. It’s important that managers and leaders not get cut off from their employees and customers, and I wanted to emphasize that with the stories that you’ll read in the featured article. I hope you enjoy it.

All the best,

Kristin

Leaders are often exhorted to view the “big picture” – to set a vision, craft a strategy and inspire the troops to follow where they bravely go. This is the glamorous – and important – aspect of attaining higher levels of organizational responsibility. Yet, it’s interesting to note that many of the best leaders are facile and expert in dealing with both the big picture and the details. Yes, seeing the big picture is mandatory for success as a leader, and this is a perspective that many less-experienced managers need to learn. However, time and again it is shown that the most effective leaders are those who can set the vision and influence others while also diving into the details when needed.

I was recently reminded of this while reading leadership lessons from Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency. After President John F. Kennedy’s death, Johnson used his expertise as the seasoned Senate majority leader to push through Kennedy’s legislative agenda. Johnson clarified Kennedy’s initiatives, turned them into “martyr’s causes” and successfully transformed them into law. Without his exceptional knowledge of and influence in the congress, Johnson would not have been successful. It was Johnson’s mix of big picture vision and his detailed expertise in Washington politics that made it all work.

Another example of a leader who combined vision and details is John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach. At the beginning of each season, he gathered his team members together to teach them how to put on their socks. Yes, he actually demonstrated how to smoothly roll up socks over the foot. You see, he knew that improperly worn socks could create blisters, and that blisters could sideline his best players. Wooden’s attention to the details – and how much more detailed can you get than how to put on socks? – Along with his vision, strategy and inspiration created the most successful basketball teams in history.

What does this mean for organizational leaders today? Let’s be clear: It does not give a manager carte blanche to micro-manage her employees, nor does it mean that the leader must learn every detail of his operations. Many of the details can be delegated to others. What leaders today must do is learn what both their customers and employees want and need, and use that knowledge to make decisions and shape strategy. A leader who is unaware of the sentiments of the organization’s stakeholders and is unaware of company operations is in danger of making decisions that may be aligned with the strategy but unfit for the particularities of the organization. This is a blindness that plagues many executives today – being unaware of the day-to-day concerns of employees and customers.

The needed combination of detail-orientation and big picture perspective is a good reason for promoting employees from within an organization to positions of leadership. Existing high potential employees already know the details of the operation and its customers, and only need to hone their big picture skills, which can be aided by the skills of an executive coach or mentor. On the other hand, there are times when outside blood can be very useful to an organization. The externally hired executive should take care to learn about his new organization.

In assuming a new position, a good leader will invest time to learn about the organization by interviewing both employees and customers. Studying employee and customer satisfaction survey results is a good way to start, but subsequent personal interviews provide nuance and details that are missing in survey reports. Use open-ended questions that aim to reveal both the positive qualities of the organization and the issues that need improvement. Customers and employees will be honored and impressed by the attention you give them, providing you needed emotional capital to make your future vision a reality.

The best leaders that I know aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get into the weeds with their employees. They walk the halls, listen and talk to people, visit clients and ask questions with open curiosity. At the same time, they strictly guard their planning and strategy time, and insist that their direct reports likewise take time to plan and review. It is in juggling the big picture with the details – and knowing when to do each thing – that you too will be successful.

Below is the third and final post in a series of three about leadership best practices. If you missed the first two, you can read part one here, and part two here.

Aerobic exercise
15 minutes of aerobic exercise is the last daily habit we recommend. No groaning, please! It’s relatively easy to work in exercise into your day, and it doesn’t have to be all at once. There are some simple ways of increasing your heart rate several times during the day:

• Park your car far away from the office and hoof it to the front door
• Use the stairs instead of the elevator (obviously, if you work on the 15th floor, I’m not suggesting you walk up the stairs, but you can use the stairs to walk between floors of your office).
• Use public transportation instead of your car.
• Walk your dog twice a day.
• Take an after-dinner walk with your family every night.
• Hit the gym on the way to or from work or during lunch time.

Plus Three
The last section of our formula is plus Three, and it refers to doing something creative three times a week. Creative is defined as something that engages your right brain such as music, art, dancing, cooking, baking, sewing, gardening, fly fishing, flying, knitting, woodworking, playing with your kids, etc. It needs to be fun and it’s usually a hobby.

If you can’t do these activities three times a week, then enjoy an armchair version of them. For example, listen to music rather than make music, or read about flying a vintage airplane, or peruse a cook book. The idea is to do or think about something completely different from your work and use different thought processes as a diversion. This is a great lesson for a life well lived.

I don’t have time for all this!
So, you think you don’t have time for 15/15/15 plus Three? We suggest you examine your daily routines to find hidden time bandits that snatch away your precious time. Do you watch TV at night? Instead of falling asleep to the TV, do your daily review before going to bed. We tend to dream about what we think of right before sleep, so listing what you are grateful for will give you pleasant dreams. The opposite is true about watching the evening news before turning in – you will sleep poorly and have agitated dreams.

What about social networking or online gaming time or Sudoku or computer games? Can you take 15 minutes out of the time you spend/waste doing these things?
I know some couples who do their daily review together. To do this, you might light a candle, take some quiet time to reflect and write, then share your most grateful and least grateful moments with each other. It is a sweet way to end your day and strengthen your relationship. It helps to have someone else to share your daily review with and keeps you accountable to doing it.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.” He knew that meditation helped him be highly efficient in the time he had available. It is counter-intuitive that sitting still for longer times will actually make you more productive, but Gandhi certainly accomplished great things. Think of how you could apply this concept to your days.

Realize that you spend time on what you value. Do you value your leadership abilities? If so, you will find time for these important practices. After 30 days, new disciplines become habits, so try our formula for a month and see what benefits you gain. After that, you will miss them if you have to skip a day.

The first two articles in series covered reviewing and planning (Part One) and focused awareness (Part Two).

Below is the second in a series of three posts about leadership best practices. If you missed the first part, you can read it here. Stay tuned for the next and last article at the beginning of May.

Focused Awareness
It’s remarkable to learn how many highly effective and high-ranking executives have a regular meditation practice, or time for focused awareness. Most of them credit their focused awareness practice with building their ability to focus, to deal with stress, to be present in the moment and to have a broader perspective on issues. Only 15 minutes a day can give you these benefits over time.

Many people find that 15 minutes of focused awareness or meditation are too much to bear at first. The research has good news about this: Just 5 minutes a day of focused awareness can bring you some of the benefits listed above. Of course, 15 minutes is ideal. DO NOT BEAT YOURSELF UP if you can’t do 15 minutes at first. Do what you can and try to build up your awareness muscle by gradually increasing the duration of the exercise. As Ram Dass says, “The only bad mediation is the one you didn’t do.”

The point of focused awareness is to still your mind a bit, to focus on one object or process (your breath is the most common focal point)and to observe and let go of any thoughts that creep in (and there will be thoughts!). The act of observing and letting go of thoughts, then directing your attention back to the focal point, is the discipline that builds focus and awareness.

To do this, sit up straight in a quiet place and close your eyes. Your back should be straight so your belly area can expand. Scan your body to make sure that you are relaxed in every spot you might hold tension: your shoulders, your face, your stomach, your legs. Take several deep belly breaths, making sure you fill your entire lungs. Now, turn your attention to your breath and observe it. As you pay attention to your breath, count your breaths. An inhale and exhale equals one breath. Count from one to ten and then start over. If you find yourself mindlessly counting past ten, just say to yourself, “Oh well,” return your attention to your breath and start over at number one.

I like to think of focused awareness as the still spot within you that is always available. If you equate your life, with all its drama, concerns and fret, to the surface of the ocean where there are waves, storms and squalls, then focused awareness is a place that is three miles below the surface of the ocean. Here, it is always tranquil. The surface storms do not touch you there.

I teach all of my clients a quick form of focused attention called HeartMath. It is a good way to start your focused awareness session, but is best used as “mini” focused attention sessions during the day. Give us a call at 817-577-7030 if you want to learn more about HeartMath, or visit www.heartmath.com.

Lastly, give focused awareness a chance. This is not a practice that delivers immediate results. Give it at least eight weeks before you judge it. After eight weeks, you will begin to notice that you don’t react as quickly to trigger situations, that you feel more calm even during stressful situations, and that you see broader perspectives when presented with a problem. You will also begin to look forward to your quiet time as a refuge from the storms of life, a safe place you can go within yourself.

In Part Three of this series, I’ll cover Aerobic Exercise and the Plus Three.

I’m pleased to share with you my latest article about leadership best practices. Because of the length of the material, I’ve created a series of three articles. Stay tuned for the next 2 articles that will come at the end of April and the beginning of May, 2012!

We know that the most highly effective leaders practice a high degree of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present in the moment, observing both your own thoughts/feelings and what is going on around you. Mindfulness is important to leaders because they must be aware of both what’s going on inside them (their thoughts, reactions, emotions and moods) and what’s happening outside them in their teams, in their organizations, with their stakeholders and within the larger society. If leaders are unaware of any of these dynamics, they are not able to manage either themselves or their organizations.

How can a leader increase his mindfulness? The research strongly suggests that a daily practice of reflection, practicing quiet attention and regular exercise is one of the best ways to develop your personal and leadership effectiveness. It also helps you manage stress by scheduling brief “time outs” during a hectic day. At Brio Leadership, we suggest a formula called “15/15/15 plus three”. What that means is a daily practice of 15 minutes of reviewing and planning, 15 minutes of focused attention or quiet time and 15 minutes of aerobic exercise, plus three sessions a week of a creative pursuit. Let’s explore each of these.

Reviewing and planning

Entry from Kristin’s journal

The first 15 minute segment is reviewing and planning: you review the previous day and plan for the coming day. We suggest that you use a journal for the review. Any notebook will do – sometimes I use an inexpensive wire-bound notebook, other times I buy a handsome journal with blank pages. In your review, think about your day’s activities, thoughts, reactions and feelings and note these two things:

• The two or three things for which you are most grateful, most proud of or that gave you the most joy.
• The one thing for which you are least grateful, least proud of or that gave you the least joy.

This should take you about 10 minutes to do. I keep a daily journal in which I notate, with a star or asterisk (*) the things that gave me the greatest joy, and with a minus sign (-) the one thing that I am least proud of or gave me the least joy. Here is what a typical entry in my journal looks like:

The other 5 minutes are spent looking over your coming day with your calendar in order to set intentions for what you will accomplish. Think of the people you are going to see, the meetings you will attend, the customers you will call, and ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the outcome I wish to accomplish with this person? How do I want to feel or think, and how do I want the other to feel or think, after our encounter?
• In order to achieve this outcome, how will I need to be? For example, I need to be calm and not anxious, or I need to be empathetic and kind, or I need to be frank and forthright.
• Is there anything I need to mentally rehearse for the day? If you need to have a pivotal conversation today, mentally rehearse how you are going to present your message and how you might interact with the person.

Many of my clients set aside 15-20 minutes at the beginning of their day to review and plan. Your Outlook calendar might look like this:

Note the yellow time segments at the beginning of the work day. You could also set aside 30 minutes at the end of the day, or during your lunch hour. It’s best to pick a time and stick to it every day, so you develop a routine and train your co-workers to respect your private time.

I was once in a corporate office where I had the opportunity to see several employee’s Outlook calendars. They all had 30-minute recurring appointments with themselves each morning for planning. The company had sponsored their attendance at a time management seminar in which they were taught to set aside planning time. It was an accepted practice at this office to spend the first 30 minutes in planning. I strongly recommend making morning planning an accepted practice at your office.

In Part Two of this series, I’ll cover Focused Awareness.

Welcome to Spring 2012! I hope you enjoy my signature article on how to incorporate reflection into your busy life. Because of the length of the material, I’ve created a series of three articles. Stay tuned for the next two articles that will come at the end of April and the beginning of May. If you enjoy the article, come hear me talk about it and more at the speaking events listed below. Lastly, I am starting to train for a 60-mile walk next fall to raise funds for breast cancer research and awareness. Read about how you can help me below.

Susan G. Komen Walk
I am walking in the Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure, which is a 60-mile walk over 3 days, to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness. I am walking in the Dallas walk next November. Would you help me raise money for this worthy cause? You can donate to the Susan G. Komen association at my fundraising website here.

I am walking in memory of my mother, Jeannette J. Robertson. At her death from other causes in 2006, she was a 14-year survivor of breast cancer. Mom held a Ph.D. in microbiology, and viewed cancer like a scientist: She wanted to understand everything about her cancer (it was estrogen-receptive positive) and all available treatments. After her mastectomy, she chose a 5-year course of chemotherapy that did the trick, evidently. Her cancer never returned. True to form, Mom fought cancer and won. I walk in memory of a great woman, a fighter and survivor: my mother.

Your support of me will sustain me as I train for this demanding event. I know that a walk doesn’t sound like much of a strain, but think of it – 60 miles in 3 days means an average of 30 miles a day – yikes! I am told that it is physically grueling and, at the same time, an inspiring experience. My formal training program starts May 1, six months before the walk. Again, here is the link to my fundraising website. And thank you!

Speaking events
After a hiatus of over a year, I am again speaking at conferences and events with a set of totally new topics. Here are the places you can hear me this spring:

• HDI Conference, Orlando, FL, Wed, April 25 at 10:15 am: The Inner Game of Highly Effective Leaders. If you are attending the HDI conference this month, please come and hear me! At this presentation, you’ll learn how to embrace the inner game of leadership and the habits of self-knowledge, self-management and on-going reflection. For more information, visit www.hdiconference.com
• Las Colinas Country Club, Irving, TX, Tuesday, May 1 at 7:30 to 9:00 am: The Inner Game of Highly Effective Leaders. I’m debuting my new presentation to a group of local colleagues and clients. All are welcome! For more information, please email us at info@brioleadership.com.
• Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NB, Thursday May 10 at noon: Intelligent Stress Management. Use all your intelligences to manage your stress and balance your life.
• Women’s Business Council – Southwest, Tuesday, May 22, Austin, TX at noon: The Inner Game of Highly Effective Leaders. At this presentation, you’ll learn how to embrace the inner game of leadership and the habits of self-knowledge, self-management and on-going reflection. For more information, visit http://www.wbcsouthwest.org

If you are interested in booking Kristin to speak for your event or meeting, please contact her at 817-577-7030 or through this form!

Happy February, 2012! I don’t remember when I’ve started a new year with such hope and general confidence. I’m not talking personal, self-centered confidence, but rather a surety about humankind and its future. Maybe it is because I am reading a lot about the rise of Conscious Capitalism (see my recommendation, below) and stages of adult development or maybe it’s just that I have finally embraced my optimism. Yes, I am an optimist that believes that humankind is advancing, that people are evolving their souls and that we as a people of Earth will figure out solutions to our problems. I’ve read recently that despite the wars that we know of, the world as a whole is experiencing unprecedented amounts of peace. Our world is safer than in any other time in human history.

In future months, I look forward to sharing with you some of my thoughts about such subjects. For today, however, I’d like to share with you a February gift: my feature article on the importance of love as a leadership quality. I hope you enjoy my musings for the month of love and Valentine’s Day.

All the best,

Kristin

It is February, the month we celebrate Valentine’s Day and the power of love. In business, we seldom talk about love and how to incorporate it into leadership. But we should! Love and compassion are important leadership and personal development traits, and they can be cultivated. I’ve been in business for many years, and have observed numerous instances of business leaders practicing love. I’d like to share some examples that might give you some ideas how you could cultivate love and compassion in your leadership. As you read these examples, ask yourself these questions: Have I ever observed a similar act of love and compassion, and if so, what was the consequence? How would I react if someone did that to me? Here’s the list:

• A CEO calls a customer service representative when her daughter is in the hospital to ask, “Is there anything we can do for you?”
• A manager leaves work at 5:30 and says good night to each employee, by name, as he passes their cubicle. Some of the employees do not report to him and one (me) is a consultant who is surprised that he knows my name because I am working with another department.
• A Vice President draws her organizational chart with frontline workers on the top and her position on the bottom. She says, “This represents who is most important to the corporation.”
• A division President calls all his Vice Presidents and their direct reportees on their birthdays to wish them well and thank them for their service to the organization.
• A President of a small company writes a large bonus check in the middle of the year to thank a new employee for his outstanding efforts.
• The CEO pays for a junior employee’s emergency surgery because the employee’s company-provided health insurance hadn’t yet kicked in. That employee eventually is promoted to be the Vice President of Human Resources at the company.
• A manager regularly asks her employees how she can support them in their job.
• A company has to sell off a division to maintain solvency and chooses a buyer who would retain all existing employees, not the buyer that offers the highest price.

Love and compassion can be ridiculed by some as “soft” or “wimpy”. Yet, recent studies have shown that employees are more productive and more engaged if they perceive that their manager cares about them as a person. In each of the above situations, love and compassion were shown. The recipients of these acts of kindness become loyal employees who go the extra mile for the company – a priceless trait that pays big dividends. There are bottom-line benefits to exhibiting love in a work environment.

How do you show love and compassion in your leadership? Send your stories to me at kristin@brioleadership.com.

Hello again! I have missed communicating with you through my e-newsletter and wanted you to know, as Mark Twain quipped after reading his obituary in a newspaper, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

During the past year, I have been consumed with developing a new service with and for my corporate clients involving the professional development of their executives and promising employees.

Beta testing is complete. I’m eager to fill you in and want to get your frank assessment of the offering. I’m so excited about this program that I would like to give you a free test drive of one of the components.

“Our company’s most important assets walk out the door every night.”

That is the credo of an executive and client of my corporate consulting company. He believes he will excel if he can help those that work for him excel. And he thinks that to excel they must be aware of their talents and weaknesses and build on their strengths. He asked me, his process optimization consultant, if I had done any work developing professional talent.

I shared with him my new coaching program, designed for executives and promising managers that combines the “hard” process efficiency tools training my consulting company uses with ”soft” professional self-development techniques.

Executive Coaching for Current and Future Executives:

Refining this coaching method has been my passion for the past year. Most rewarding has been seeing the results of the program – results from people who have changed their approaches, thought processes and reactions due to feedback received and increased self-insight. Ultimate outcomes of these internal changes have included promotions to new positions, finding a new job that uses the person’s strengths, and turn-arounds of failing teams.

Successful personal and professional development always starts with greater self-knowledge and self-awareness.

This month, I offer you a short article on the value of self-knowledge and self-awareness.

All the best,

Kristin Robertson

Yeast is the ingredient that makes bread rise. Similarly, enhanced self-knowledge is the ingredient in professional development that makes careers rise and allows you to develop to your full potential. The most effective leaders have a high level of insight into themselves: their talents, their weaknesses, their desires, their patterns of thought and reaction. Self-knowledge is the ability to see yourself as others see you and to understand your essential nature. Once you gain a sufficient level of self-knowledge, you can accept both your strengths and weaknesses and manage others’ strengths and weaknesses with greater skill and mastery.

The recent problems at HP tells us that winning corporate strategies require the same foundation of self-knowledge (though we use different terminology in corporate consulting).  As you know, the giant of Silicon Valley recent went into a tailspin and fired its CEO.  Critics said HP lost its way.  It forgot what its strengths were and how to leverage them in a brutal, competitive environment.  Not to take sides in the Apple vs PC fight, but Apple seems to know and be quite comfortable with who it is.

Like corporations, if we want to succeed we need to regularly re-evaluate what we are about and gear our assets to the changing world around us.

The Psychology Behind the Theory

In Mastering Self-Leadership, Charles Manz and Christopher Neck say, “If we ever hope to be effective leaders of others, we need first to be able to lead ourselves effectively.”¹ In order to lead yourself well, you must have a high degree of both self-knowledge and self-awareness. Self-knowledge refers to the accuracy of your understanding of both your strengths and leadership limitations. Self-awareness is your ability to reflect on your thoughts, feelings and behaviors as they happen. The distinction may seem fuzzy, so we will focus on self-knowledge in this article.

A useful structure for understanding what you know and don’t know about yourself is the Johari Window, named after its creators, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. It’s a great tool for mapping personal awareness:

 
The matrix shows how aspects of yourself – your personality traits, experiences, thoughts, feelings, reactions, mental models², etc – are either known or unknown to both you and others. Notice that each of the quadrants in the window has a descriptive name for that area of the self: Open Self, Blindspots, Hidden Self and Unknown Self. Each of these “windows” represents parts of you.

What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

Highway accident statistics say that there are approximately 840,000 side-to-side blind spot collisions with 300 fatalities every year in the United States.  Likewise being unaware of what you are and how you are perceived can kill your chances to advance and succeed in your career and life.

Executive coaching helps people move the things from the right, harmful side of their matrix (what they do not know about themselves), to the left side, where knowledge can become power – power to build on strengths and overcome weaknesses.

The scariest and perhaps most damaging quadrant on the right side of the matrix is aptly called Blind Spots.  It is what others see in you that you do not see in yourself.  To remove Blind Spots, executive coaching teaches clients proven methods for soliciting  feedback from others.  Using personality and personal strength assessments coaches can help the client create a context for interpreting and acting on the information they gather.  Likewise coaching helps clients examine their career and life experiences to key in on their Blind Spots.

The other problematic quadrant in the matrix is the lower right and called “Unknown Self”.  While it sounds a little spooky, this part of you that you and others do not see can in fact be a land of great opportunity.

A great football coach once said that greatness is not taught, it is revealed.  The goal of coaching in this quadrant is to reveal  and exploit strengths and potential that were previously unknown or unappreciated.  In addition to some of the tools used to attack Blind Spots, coaches often help clients select challenging assignments that take them out of their comfort zone and then interpret and leverage what they learn.

This true story illustrates Blindspots problems and how they can to be addressed:

A talented young woman had risen quickly to a management position in a company.  Her promotions were based on her great subject knowledge and hard work but her advancement suddenly stalled.  She could not understand why.  A coach was called in who prescribed a 360^O assessment.

The woman was shocked by the results; while respected for her smarts, colleagues roundly criticized her leadership skills.  The coach helped her work through the feedback and had her complete several personality indicators to reveal strengths she could be exploit to improve her performance.   Through the sometimes painful process she removed many of her Blind Spots and with her coach’s help modified her thought patterns and behaviors and revamped her approach to leadership.  Her team is back on track and she plans to do a follow-up 360 to test results.

And here’s an example of someone who decreased his Unknown Self:  This young man was afraid of flying.  He had never flown anywhere in his life.  When offered the opportunity early in his career to make a presentation in Seattle, which was 3,000 miles away, he reluctantly accepted.  He learned to manage his fear of flying and is now an enthusiastic world traveler.  No one, especially himself, could have predicted that he would grow to love traveling.  That aspect of himself, the avid world traveler, was transformed from an aspect of his Unknown Self into an area of his Open Self by saying yes to this challenging assignment.

The benefits of increased self-knowledge are many. Leaders who have deep self-knowledge operate at the highest levels of effectiveness. They understand what motivates them, they know what triggers negative emotions or reactions in themselves, and they are aware of their strengths. They act authentically in ways that align with both their values and their personality. They are wise enough to neutralize their weaknesses by admitting them and delegating to others the tasks pertaining to their weaknesses. They seek to develop themselves in ways that build on their strengths and challenge them to become the best they can be. And, because they know themselves so well, they are able to motivate others and create highly productive, happy teams.

Want some yeast in your professional development? Try self-knowledge. Enhancing your self-knowledge and awareness is one of the best ways to raise your effectiveness.

1. Charles Manz and Chris Neck, Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence (5th Edition), Prentice Hall, 2009

2. Mental models are patterns of thought and reaction that are formed in childhood and youth by your life experiences. These thought patterns are strongly wired into the brain and must be examined in order to heighten self-knowledge and design new thought patterns and behaviors.