The Rear View Mirror

January is the traditional time when many people make ‘resolutions’ for the coming year.  I like the word resolution.  To me, it means a firm decision to do or not do something. One of its synonyms is ‘intention’ and I have a passion for living my life (personally and professionally) with awareness and intention.  But those of you who are familiar with my work (and blog) already know that!

Resolutions are personal and/or professional promises that we make, mainly to ourselves, for the year ahead that will help us to be both better and different in ways that are meaningful to each of us.  I think resolutions are a fine idea.  I am a ‘resoluter’, although I don’t limit my intentions to January alone.  But it’s hard to argue with the power that January brings to us – the New Year is fresh and alive with sparks of possibility and resolutions are an opportunity to project our power into the near future, gear up for greatness and pre-pave our experiences for the next twelve months.

So, while I think that committing ourselves to a select few resolutions each year can be a useful habit, there is another ritual that I practice at this time that provides even more value.  I have found that the end of one year and the beginning of another provides a perfect moment to look in the rear view mirror and thoughtfully, proudly, authentically and constructively review and then celebrate the past twelve months.  This ‘year in review’ habit that I have cultivated is one that I truly savor. Over time, it has:

·         yielded increasingly valuable insights;

·         allowed me to gain perspective on difficult moments;

·         forced me to acknowledge successes, even those that were originally disguised as challenges;

·         helped me to forgive myself and others;

·         piqued my curiosity & stoked my creativity;

·         launched me in new directions;

·         taught me beneficial lessons; and

·         gifted me with opportunities to mourn losses.

My look in the rear view mirror each year warms the soil for those fresh promises that I make to myself – and the virtuous cycle continues.

One of the most discouraging and dangerous laments that I hear too often from clients and colleagues goes something like this…”This all sounds good. I wish that I could do it. But I don’t have time to think!  I’m too busy getting things done to stop and think!” Before you blink your eyes and find yourself at the end of the first quarter of 2014, wondering what happened to those three months, schedule some ‘think time’ and take a long, appreciative look in your rear view mirror.  Connect your head, heart and gut and travel month by month back through 2013:

·         List all of the many, many things that went well (were right) during the year
·         Ask yourself what was the toughest challenge that you face. What worked? What didn’t?
·         Identify times/situations in which you demonstrated bravery or organizational courage
·         Think closely about your relationships. How many did you build? Mend? Harm?
·         Look for ways and times in which you surprised yourself
·         Focus specifically on lessons that you learned
·         Zero in on your proudest moment – What was it? Why are you so proud?
·         Get specific on all the ways in which you practiced everyday leadership – really led from your seat at work.  In the community.  At home.
·         Tell yourself the unvarnished truth about mistakes, snap-backs and other missed opportunities. What would you do differently if you had a do-over day?
·         Finally, ask yourself if you were true to the promises, the resolutions, which you made last January.

Looking back frees me to look ahead more confidently, more fearlessly. Your mom was right…look both ways…..

It's All Good (Or is it?)

I was talking to my colleague and friend, Bill, several weeks ago.  By now, I can’t even remember what he said that prompted my all too familiar, over-worked response – “It’s all good.”

There’s something about this slang phrase that really appeals to me.  It’s positive, upbeat and fun.  It sounds cool.  And, depending on the situation, it can even strike a note of forgiveness, kindness or generosity of thought.

Back to my conversation with Bill….This time, my “It’s all good” response was met with an atypical reaction.  Bill came back with, “No, it’s not” in a strong, matter-of-fact tone of voice.  He went on to explain that he had come to dislike that phrase and that he was on a mission to challenge it every time he heard it!  He felt that it was simply too much – used too frequently and too casually without any thought.  And, as a superlative, it usually wasn’t even true.  After all, rarely is EVERYTHING good.  He was campaigning for the use of an alternate phrase – It’s Mostly Good – and he invited me to join him in getting the message out.

At first, I was amused by the conversation.  But, as it turned out, it was thought provoking and I really like challenging my same old same old habits.  I’ve concluded that Bill is on to something.  I realized that I was one of those people who used that phrase way too often and without intention or mindfulness.  I was on autopilot.  I know (and you probably do too) that if you want to be a highly effective, great communicator, then you’ve got to be choiceful about your word selection.  Every interaction.  Every conversation.  And because highly effective communication is directly linked to peak performance, outstanding teams, goal achievement, and well, just about everything that we all want, we should ALL be fanatically focused on being world class communicators.

Yes, I’ve joined Bill’s campaign.  Now, from time to time, I say, “It’s Mostly Good.”  I’m selective.  I pick the right moment for the comment.  It’s more authentic.  It makes me stop and think for a moment.  I’m not on autopilot.  And, best of all, it makes the person to whom I’m talking take notice and stop and think.  It’s thought provoking (and you know I love this), it starts a conversation about intentionality and the importance of clear communication.  It’s all good. (Oops, I mean it’s mostly good!) 

Announcing the 2013 Take The Lead Award

We wanted you to be among the first to hear our good news!   For years, Vantage International has been committed to developing powerful, effective ‘everyday leaders’ at all levels within organizations.  We’ve coached, taught, facilitated, spoken and written about the game changing dynamic of ‘leading from every seat.’ These experiences have fanned the flame of our passion for the message and created sparks of possibility in more and more workplace cultures. Now, we want to do even more to create a movement that changes the way we think of leadership for good! It is with pride and excitement that we announce the 2013 Take The Lead Award!

This award is intended to recognize and honor one ‘everyday leader’ who best demonstrates unwavering dedication to leading from her/his seat every day at work. We invite you to spread the word about this opportunity across your own organization; share the message with colleagues in other organizations; nominate a worthy individual; and encourage others to do so as well.  Help us to create a buzz! To get things rolling, we’ve included a flyer that you can print and display on your organization’s community boards or post on your intranet.

The Take The Lead (TTL) nomination process is easy and straightforward.  Here’s how it works in just a few simple steps:

• Visit http://www.vantage-inter.com/2013-ttl-award and carefully read all of the specific details on the Award
• Click on the link to the Nomination Form and complete all of the fields. Of particular importance is the narrative that creatively and thoroughly outlines why the nominee should be selected as this year’s recipient. Tell us a compelling story!
• Then, simply submit the online form. Nominators will receive an email confirmation that his/her submission has been received

Nominations will be accepted from September 15, 2013 through December 15, 2013. 

We believe that even the simple acts of talking about this award within your organization, publicizing it, thinking about who to nominate and then crafting a narrative that shares the story of an everyday leader will accrue benefit to you and your team by:

•  Actively thinking about and scouting for  leaders in every seat
•   Raising awareness of each person’s own leadership talents and those of others
•  Recognizing and appreciating one another as everyday leaders
•  Promoting new levels of accountability, engagement and community

If you have any questions about the 2013 TTL Award, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@vantage-inter.com. The Vantage International Team is looking forward to reading your “Everyday Leadership” stories!

Let’s create a movement together!

Warmly and Appreciatively,

Leta Beam

President

Vantage International

www.vantage-inter.com

Micro-Affirmations at work

Some of the most important actions that we take at work help others around us to lead from their seats – to show up as the best versions of themselves each day and fulfill their individual responsibilities within the organization with grit, gusto and creativity.

One way that we do that is to act as role models – You first! – You lead from your seat and you show up as the best version of YOU! Another meaningful way to grow leaders around us is to recognize and acknowledge others’ greatness. First, we’ve got to be looking for those ‘coaching’ moments and then we have to let people know that we notice that they are choosing to be both better and different; that they’re leading, making strong decisions, acting as adults. Second, we want to emphatically let our colleagues know that they are valued; that what they do is making a difference and moving us in the right direction. We want to authentically tell them that we are proud of them and in so doing, challenge them to continue to lead.

The best, most sustainable way to appreciate and recognize others is to intentionally look for everyday (yes, every day!) opportunities to offer a sincere, specific message that fuels the leadership spark in them. These small verbal, non-verbal or written messages (or cues) are called micro-affirmations. Sending these regularly helps to build and grow others quicker than anything else! Make it a part of your leadership practice to feed others a steady diet of micro-affirmations throughout the day. Catch people leading from their seats. Appreciate what they are doing ‘right!” and dare them to do even more of it.

Focusing your attention on what other people are doing well will serve to remind you of just how great things are most days – there’s a heck of a lot more going right in your organization than going wrong. And by recognizing the greatness in others, you simply cannot help but recognize it in yourself. That’s the crazy wisdom of it all!!

Let your own light shine by affirming others. After all you are a VIL – a very important leader! (BTW, that’s a micro-affirmation)

Big doors swing on small hinges. The seemingly small choices that you make throughout your day pay HUGE dividends. Take the Lead!

P.S. Here’s another exciting way to appreciate, recognize and affirm your colleagues --- Nominate someone for the Take The Lead Award!!! This is the first year that Vantage International is sponsoring this opportunity and we would love for each of you to participate. The simple realization that you thought highly enough of someone to nominate her/him will thrill that person and encourage them to even higher levels of ownership, commitment and performance. So, take those extra few minutes to check out the details today by following the link:

http://www.vantage-inter.com/2013-ttl-award/

Fresh Eyes

One of those small but significant (I always say ‘big door swing on small hinges) habits that everyday leaders practice is to view their work with ‘fresh eyes’ each day. If you’re committed to being both better and different then you’ve got to have the courage, energy and discipline to briefly pause before you jump in and ‘do’ the work  Take a look at it as though you’re seeing it for the first time. If you could press the re-wind button, how would you organize the work differently; what would you do to have a better outcome, make your job or someone else’s easier?

Think of it another way – when you slow down and really re-examine your work and explore your processes and approaches, you actually have the chance to speed up in the long run, by becoming more effective and efficient. Slow down to speed up!

When you look at your work with fresh eyes, it’s as though you have a new leadership lens that endows you with ‘super powers’ to:

·         Connect the dots differently

·         See opportunities that were hidden in plain sight

·         Have an in-sight on the solution to a wicked problem

·         Experience an ‘aha’ moment or a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious)

Now, this isn’t an invitation to go rogue and change your work flow without running it by others. It is all about making suggestions that help you be the best version of yourself and get great work done AND help your colleagues and the organization.

So today, be fearless! Change the lens through which you see your world. Write down any ideas (no censorship please) that surface for streamlining, eliminating, combining, re-creating….You might be surprised at how long that list is. Then pick one, maybe two to pursue. Now, lead from your seat and talk with your colleagues and your boss about your new ideas. Take a risk…take the lead!

Breaking Free

In my last post, I promised to share with you the #1 secret to breaking free of ‘dysfunctional comfort.’ For those of you who are jumping in to the conversation for the first time, the way that I have defined dysfunctional comfort is that odd feeling of reassurance or relief around a longstanding relationship, process, procedure or approach, even though it is unhealthy, outmoded, broken or just plain wrong!

I also gave you a hint (actually a BIG hint) as to what that secret might be. So, here it is…if we genuinely want to challenge the cycle of dysfunctional comfort, we must begin to cultivate un-comfortableness as a cultural value in ourselves, others around us and throughout our organization. We have to consider it a healthy part of the growth and development process of individuals, teams and entire work places. Now, before you say…”well, duh!”….let’s really think about the implications of this.

It means that we’ve got to take the risk of looking at what’s going on around us at work through a different lens. We’ve got to start questioning everything. If you choose to do that each day, you’ll begin to pick up on new options, fresh possibilities, unexplored opportunities or alternate solutions.

Let me put this another way: We’ve got to intentionally ask ourselves if our ‘same old same old’ way of thinking or acting is the best option in the moment. And, if it’s not….then we’ve got to have the courage to admit that to ourselves and shed stuff that we’ve outgrown or no longer does the trick. Remember, a snake needs to shed its skin from time to time or it dies. Once the shedding is complete, the snake isn’t weaker or more vulnerable; it’s actually renewed and stronger. I think the same is true for everyday leaders!

So, how do we become more intentional? How do we begin to take small steps aimed at becoming more aware and then more choice-ful of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors? Here are some new habits that can give you some traction and momentum:

·         Reformat your old ‘programs’ – The most important conversation that you have each day, is the one that’s going on in your own head. Start there by consciously choosing your self-talk message. Remind yourself over and over again each day that you are in charge of you at all times; that you are a powerful decider. I use a very simple four-word mantra to get the job done in my own head. In this context, mantra means ‘words repeated to aid concentration and focus.’  

Reframe – Reclaim – Rejoice – Re-choice

You’ll find these words in other resources as I didn’t create them. Here’s what they mean to me:

            Reframe – I choose the frame of reference that I will use in a given situation

            Reclaim – I once again claim my personal power

Rejoice -   I choose to notice and celebrate all of the many things going right in my experience

Re-choice – I choose not to be on autopilot. I choose not to continue in dysfunctional comfort. I choose to be better and different.

·         Use affirmations regularly – Create a series of micro-affirmations (small ways that you validate yourself) also help to reset your subconscious to a new channel of self-talk. Make them uniquely you! This allows you to constructively challenge those same old same old habits.

·         Pre-pave your day – This is my version of one of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – begin with the end in mind. Make it your new habit to review your day before things get rolling (in only takes five minutes). Visualize the various segments of your day as you would ideally like to experience them. One of my coaching clients has used this mini skill to completely reframe his participation in meetings throughout his business day. Before he enters the meeting room, he simply pauses and reflects on who he wants to be during that meeting, how he will behave, and what outcome he wants. Then he keeps those thoughts foremost in his mind as he moves through the meeting. Nothing else changed…and yet everything changed for this leader. Pre-pave your day with an eye toward how you can be both better and different; how you can shake up your own dysfunctional comfort!

·         Another set of eyes – Invite a colleague to take a look at one of your processes or procedures to uncover new ways of getting our work done well. Be curious about and receptive to her feedback, rather than defensive.

·         Evidence journal – At the end of the day, make it a practice to write down all of the ways that things went well that day. Things you learned. Examples of different and better. A breakthrough. Small wins. This small practice has helped me to end many work days with a sense of pride, victory and accomplishment.

Here are two examples, from my book, Take The Lead, of how people just like you have successfully challenged dysfunctional comfort to create different experiences at work:

·         A cafeteria cashier shifted from hating her job, feeling invisible and unappreciated and disliking the people whom she served, to really connecting and helping people get their day off to a great start. She decided to make one small change—she would smile more at people. That’s it. Big doors swing on small hinges. Little change…big payoff. In less than a month, she was receiving many complements and one of her regular customers told her that she should change her name to Joy, because that’s what gift she gave everyone. It is also important to note that the restaurant’s business in the morning began to grow. Coincidence? I don’t believe in them!

·         Union workers and management staff at a manufacturing company set aside long standing distrust and began to communicate differently. There were only small wins at first. It was so hard for both sides to stop repeating unproductive behavior—dysfunctional comfort—and start thinking about what might be possible. Instead of blaming, there’s more ownership. They have much more work to do together, but let’s declare it a victory so far.

Remember, shed or dead! I dare you to recognize your own areas of dysfunctional comfort and then choose to be both better and different.

Beware: Organizational Quicksand!

Hey, its’ great to be back! I want to pick up on one of the themes in my last post before the summer whirlwind…dysfunctional comfort.

Sometimes, I’ll begin a conversation on this topic by asking my clients or the audience (depending on the venue), “How many of you want things to improve in your organizations?” Almost every hand shoots up immediately! Then I ask a follow-up question, “How many of you are willing to stretch, change, grow or learn in order to make that happen?” All but a few of those hands sheepishly go down.

Uh oh. That’s a problem.

We can’t simply show up and do the same old thing, the same old way and assume that we will be individually or collectively competitive and successful. In fact, chances are, we won’t be.

Uh oh. That’s an even bigger problem.

If we are to challenge our current habits at work when we interact with one another, then we must come off autopilot—stop thinking, feeling, or doing things only because we have thought, felt or acted that way for a very long time. To be an effective everyday leader, one of the first steps we must take is to develop a healthy mistrust for our current habits. You read that correctly --- be wary of our everyday habits! Many of us cling to the familiar like a life preserver in choppy water. We are comfortable with what we know even if we suspect or know that it doesn’t come close to being us at our best.

My language for the organizational quicksand that holds many of us stuck in that way is dysfunctional comfort. It refers to that odd feeling of reassurance or relief around a longstanding relationship, process, procedure, or approach even though it is unhealthy, outmoded, broken or just plain wrong. We are reassured simply because it is familiar. It includes old thought patterns (prejudices and biases) about other people, groups, or institutions that are kept alive in organizations despite a contrary objective truth. Dysfunctional comfort also has a complementary feeling of defensiveness when we are asked to surrender it for something different. Dysfunctional comfort is the archenemy of progress and improvement. And, because of that, it stands squarely in the way of leading from every seat and reaching new levels of engagement at work.

Why is dysfunctional comfort sooo seductive for many of us?

I have made it a practice to explore the reasons why colleagues hang on to dysfunctional comfort so long. Here are some of the answers we’ve come up with:

1.    My reptilian brain makes me do it!—A powerful part of the brain, the amygdala, wants the world to run on routine, not change. This ancient area of the mind deals with the way we perceive and respond to the world; the amygdala urges us to favor the familiar and routine. It craves safety and control. At some point in the distant past, this may have saved our species from extinction. Today, however, it is maladaptive. We are not simply servants of our amygdala! We can choose to intentionally over ride this tendency and begin to see sparks of possibility for making things better around us, including ourselves.

2.    Inertia has me in its grip—It’s easier to know what to expect and complain about what is wrong than to hold oneself accountable for identifying challenges and finding better solutions for them. It takes energy to get going in a different (even slightly) direction. We’ve got to climb out of our thought rut and intentionally engage in something new.

3.    The devil you know is better than the one you don’t— This is why, when I ask, most employees will agree that they want things to get better in the workplace; yet few are willing to be the change that they want to see. The possibility that things might actually get worse looms large for some.

4.    I’ll settle for good—I frequently find that our colleagues convince themselves that, while something isn’t the best that it could be, it’s also not the worst. “It’s a whole lot worse in other organizations!” “It’s never going to be perfect!” or “don’t wake that baby to hear it cry!” are examples of excuses to keep doing what we’re doing. This often feels as though it is a particularly reasonable position to take in light of the hectic pace and degree of “busyness” that many of us experience in our work lives. “Good,” as Jim Collins so astutely reminds us, “is the enemy of great.”

Now what? 

Check out our next post to find out how to break free from the cycle of dysfunctional comfort! Here’s a hint…it could feel a bit ‘uncomfortable.’