A Time For Letting Go

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My mother used to say that she spent the first half of her life accumulating things and the second half getting rid of them. The important things in life, she learned, aren’t things.

At this stage of my life, I get it. After months of reflection, Val and I have decided to simplify our life and downsize. We have decided to sell our beautiful acreage and move to a smaller home.

While I’m not yet ready to retire, we want less stress and responsibility and want to free up more energy to focus on what truly matters. Simplifying our life will allow me to be more intentional with my work, live with fewer distractions, and create greater financial flexibility. It’s a journey of shifting my mindset and priorities towards what truly brings us joy and meaning.

I’ll deeply miss the forest, the nature conservancy in our backyard where I walk the dogs every morning, and the creek our family and friends have played in for years. But with our kids now launched and busy building their lives, it’s time to step aside and give someone else the opportunity to build memories in this beautiful location we have enjoyed all these years.

This is a transition time for us: for letting go, grieving and celebrating.

As we go let, my hope is to make room for something new to emerge, to continue to be a guide to those I serve – with greater clarity, renewed energy, and focus. I look forward to sharing the journey with you in the coming weeks with the hope it will inspire you to live with peace and alignment to your values.

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Three strategies for responding to bullying.

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From my research and observation of people over the past four decades, I have come to believe all behavior has positive intent. This means any behavior we might label as destructive, has, from another viewpoint, a beneficial purpose. For example, from the perspective of a bully, intimidating or harassing others can be a way of attempting to show competence (even though it’s not very skillful). It may be a coping strategy after themselves being bullied. Abusive behavior can be a way of managing anxiety or insecurity. It’s an unconscious way of making yourself big when you actually feel small.

This doesn’t justify bullying. It simply brings some understanding and empathy to the experience.

With this awareness, here are three strategies for responding to bullying:

  1. Clarity. Clearly understand how intimidation, harassment, and bullying are a violation of the values and expectations of your organization. Start by clarifying and communicating exactly what disrespectful behavior is, in terms of organizational and leadership expectations. Clarity means understanding precisely the difference between leading and intimidating.
  2. Courage. You have to let people know that certain behavior violates the expectations of the organization, and therefore is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. You simply can’t work here if you’re going to behave in a disrespectful way. If you don’t get support with this from your organization, then you have to consider if this is a place where you want to work.
  3. Compassion. Respecting the intent behind bullying can create an opportunity to grow, to move toward a plan for change. This plan may involve coaching and learning strategies such as developing greater emotional intelligence, skills for managing anxiety more effectively, increasing your self-awareness, and accountability.

Three Essentials To Carry Us Authentically Into 2022

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“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
The Alchemist
Lately, social media reflects how glad people are to see the end of 2021. I get the frustration, but let me ask: What are you going to do differently in 2022 to make this a better year?
Remember – it isn’t the year that determines us; it’s our choices in the year that determines us. Circumstances don’t define who we are. Circumstances reveal who we are.
Responding within ourselves and our teams to the three essential needs of people now will help make 2022 a better year.
1) Certainty. When is the last time you attended a wedding, had dinner out, went to a movie, sent your kids to school, or planned a trip without concern about whether it would be cancelled or complicated with restrictions? Managing the uncertainty of this pandemic the past two years is wearing us out. We all yearn to return to some semblance of certainty.
2) Connection. Social distancing, zoom calls, and masks have separated us. When is the last time you shook a person’s hand without being self-conscious? Or even freely gave a hug without worrying about what was appropriate? Even introverts want to reconnect in meaningful ways, collaborate freely without restraints, and get back to relaxing in another’s presence. While physical separation means to curtail the spread of the virus, the impact of increased social isolation on our over-all well-being is noteworthy.
3) Clarity. The amount of information—and misinformation—about COVID has swollen rapidly the past year and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. In our current “infodemic,” myths, conspiracy theories, scams, armchair epidemiologists, and Twitter scientists abound. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than the virus and is likely just as dangerous. We are all in need of clarity of what is true and clarity as to the direction of our lives.
As leaders coming into this new year, helping your teams respond to these needs is a vital priority. If you don’t have a title, you can become a leader by taking responsibility to turn these needs into agreements with yourself.
1) Certainty – What will you preserve? Certainty is not, as many of us have been taught, an end state. It’s a poor source of security. Embracing the uncertainty that comes with growth is a mindset. With the endless uncertainty of apocalyptic weather events, political and economic instability, and ongoing new variants, learning how to find certainty from within is the new leadership proficiency. It starts by embracing the wisdom of uncertainty. When we detach from our need for certainty and accept that uncertainty is a part of being alive, we gain freedom from our past, freedom from the imprisonment of knowing. Growth is made possible by embracing the wisdom of uncertainty. By stepping into the unknown – the field of all possibilities – we open ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates all of life. Willingness to accept uncertainty helps solutions spontaneously emerge from confusion, disorder, and chaos. When you step into the field of all possibilities, you will experience the fun, adventure, magic, and mystery of life. Rather than waiting for the world to become certain to make you feel safe, you can find certainty – and thus security – from within. The best way to embrace uncertainty is to put your efforts on what is within your control and let go of what you can’t control.
2) Connection. How will you connect? Authentic leaders are in tune with those around them. They read people. They inspire by being connected and showing deep concern for others. They build lasting friendships. Decide to take care of your team now. With each team member, identify their unique lane and be sure that their role is viewed as vitally important to the organization. Take the time to get a “temperature read” for how people are doing right now. How is their well-being? Their mental health? Their overall state? Their stress level? Use this time to check in with people. Take time to care enough to make the connection.
3) Clarity. What needs clarifying? One of the ways to counter the uncertainty in the world is to bring clarity to the world. Here are five questions that require clarity in leadership and life: How am I feeling today? Authenticity – honesty without judgement – can inspire. What is my reason for being, my why? A life without a clear sense of purpose is diminished to drudgery. What is my vision for my life and my work in the next three years? Without a vision, we languish. How do I define success? If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you at your funeral, you will find your definition of success. How will I live? Take time to explore these questions for yourself. Then spend time clarifying and communicating with your team the answers to these questions in an organizational context. Ambiguity is a formula for mediocrity. Clarity is inspiring. And we are all in need of some inspiration right now.

Staying Connected: Making The Beast Beautiful

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Learn the alchemy
True human beings know.
The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.
-Rumi
Some people break during difficult times, while others break open and lead us into a better world. As this pandemic wears on, it is time to examine how to allow the pain of it to break us open so a stronger, wiser and kinder self can emerge. If we can use the present reality as an opportunity to clarify our values and grow into better people, we can inspire others to pull out of their despair and fear and trade distraction and denial for deepening and connecting.
In other words, if we can open our hearts to ourselves, with all our shortcomings and all of our beauty, we can then open our hearts to others and do our part to create a new world.
And we can begin to do that by taking the authentic journey, which I suggest starts with the following:
Be Real
There’s something attractive about realness. We are drawn toward what is real, like sunsets, beauty, and honesty. There’s an unwritten rule in the speaking profession: Don’t give a motivational speech at a funeral. It might be a good message but the timing sucks.
Being real means we respect ourselves enough to be honest with ourselves and the people that matter to us. We have to be willing to face our fears honestly before we can call ourselves courageous. And the most courageous thing we can do is ask for help.
Being real means it’s okay to not be okay, and trust that we’ll get through this and move forward together – with honesty, grace, and compassion. We have to grieve before we build.
Find a champion
An inspiring cornerstone of the Calgary Catholic School District is the commitment to every student having a champion. Every child deserves a one-on-one relationship with an adult in the school who believes in them unconditionally, who knows they have their back, and who is in their corner. In order to ensure that every child has a champion, every employee must have a champion.
The journey of transforming difficulty into an adventure that opens us to growth may be a lonely journey, but it can’t be done alone. The lone-warrior model of leadership is heroic suicide. We all need champions in our lives – confidants that hold space for us while we hold the space for others and allies that stand beside us and behind us. We all need at least one person in our life who believes in us when we can’t find it in ourselves.
Choose a growth mindset
Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, has done extensive research on mindset.  She has found that our mindset exists on a continuum, from fixed to mixed to growth.
People with a fixed mindset are attached to the comfort of their current perception of themselves and others and to not failing. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t let their fears determine their choices. They are less attached to the opinion of others and thus are more willing to step into the possibility that comes from uncertainty. A growth mindset – a willingness to be vulnerable, learn, grow, and be up for challenges that are ahead – thrives in periods like the pandemic. When difficulty or obstacles arise, instead of, “Why is this happening to me?” a growth mindset asks, “How is this happening for me?”
Get stronger
After recovering from polio meningitis when I was four, my father took painstaking efforts to incrementally build my strength each day. He would lift me up on the parallel bars and have me practice holding myself there. We had a daily routine of 5BX exercises and time on the tumbling mat. He was a nationally ranked gymnast and he encouraged me every day to get stronger.
Even today, forty years after his passing, I can hear him say, “Don’t pray for life to get easier. Pray for you to get stronger.” Both his wisdom as well as his health habits have stayed with me through all kinds of difficult periods in my life. It’s a reminder that resilience and security don’t come from the world; they come from my capacity to access resources from within. Strengthening habits – like weight training, meditation, yoga, relaxation, rest and opening up to others – have sustained me through all the difficult times of my life.
Clarify A Compelling Vision
A friend of mine works for an organization called AAWEAR, a group of people in Alberta with a history of hard drug use. Through supporting each other, educating others, and raising awareness of health issues, AAWEAR strives for an improved quality of life for those in the drug using community.
My friend meets daily with people who live in tents and on sidewalks in the city of Edmonton. His vision is to help those who struggle with drug abuse and homelessness recognize that they deserve respect and understanding within their community. No matter how dark things get around him, Tyler is inspired by a vision to help others live a better life.
What inspires you in the difficult times? What gets you up early? What keeps you up late? What inspires you to keep walking through the rough terrains of your life to see you through to the other side? We all need a vision – beyond our own self-interest – to keep us moving forward through inevitable doldrums and disillusionments of life’s journey.
We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But it takes a devotion to our personal growth and development to embrace times of change and difficulty, such as this pandemic, and reach within so a better person can emerge. Hard times can motivate us to embody the hero within us. The psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” This journey is described in my book, The Other Everest: Navigating the Pathway to Authentic Leadership, and the journey we go through in our Life In Transitions course. It is the journey to the deeper aspects of our nature that awaken us to who we are meant to be. And that is how we can use this beast of a pandemic to find what is beautiful in ourselves and the world around us.

Seven Steps To Holding An Employee Accountable

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“Everyone on a team knows who is and who is not performing and they are looking to you as the leader to see what you are going to do about it.” – Collin Powell, former US Secretary of State

Last week, in a two-day culture and leadership development workshop with a group of executives, one of the leaders made a fascinating statement: “I’ve been a positional leader for almost thirty years, and I’ve never learned an actual process for holding people accountable.”

I find this fascinating. We talk about “holding people accountable” all the time. We all know we need to be doing it, and we all think we know what we talking about. But do we? Far too often, tasks are assigned to employees in a haphazard way, hoping that the worker will ‘figure it out’ and deliver an adequate, even superior, performance. If this is your accountability process, you will soon realize that ‘hope’ is a better strategy for frustration than it is for results.

I have observed three reasons why managers don’t hold people accountable:

  • They aren’t clear about how to do it. There isn’t a clear accountability process in place.
  • They don’t want to be the bad guy. A recent Harvard study showed that many managers, hoping to get promoted, refrain from holding their people accountable because they want to get good performance feedback and stay in line for promotion.
  • It’s too hard. Let’s face it. It’s tough holding people accountable. It takes courage. Leaders must be prepared to put in the time and to have the tough conversations.

Seven Steps To Holding People Accountable

  1. Build Trust – Accountability without trust is compliance. Make the connection. Be trustworthy. Keep your promises. Be accountable. Make the connection.
  2. Discover the Reason – Accountability without a vision – without purpose and passion – is drudgery. If someone lacks accountability in their work, it usually means that haven’t found a reason to be accountable. They don’t have a why. Before you talk about results, if at all possible, help your employees discover a fit – between what they are passionate about what is expected of them. Even if you find out that their primary passion lies outside of work, at least you are supporting them. Fit people; don’t fix people.
  3. Clarify – Ambiguity breeds mediocrity. People need to be clear about what is expected and how success is defined. Clarify expectations, including what kind of attitude is required and what results are promised. People also need a clear line of sight between how their contribution makes a direct impact on the success of the organization.
  4. Get an Agreement – I define accountability as: The ability to be counted on. Accountable people never make a promise they can’t keep. But we need to get better at making promises. A request is not an agreement. If you want to hold someone accountable, you must get their full 100% agreement. Before you make an agreement, be sure the willingness, the resources, and the capabilities are in place. If you don’t get an agreement to a required request, then go to Step 6.
  5. Support Requirements – To be committed, engaged, and ultimately accountable, people need to feel that they can talk openly about the support they require to achieve their accountabilities. What support is needed? Your employee’s negotiated support requirements will be your accountability to them. The support requirements of your employees will be their accountabilities to you.
  6. Consequences – With no consequences there will be no accountabilities. Always start with positive consequences (motivators). Motivators are the internal or external results of delivering on your accountabilities. Motivators are meant to inspire you to achieve your accountabilities. If these don’t get the job done, then go to negative consequences.
  7. Follow up – Follow up means a clear understanding of a plan for follow-through, including how often we need to meet and with whom, to ensure that you hold yourself and each other accountable for honoring the promises you have made to each other. If you end up getting to negative consequences, then follow up means you must now be accountable to follow through on the consequences that were put forward to your employee.

If accountability remains a challenge for you or for your organization, I’d like to hear from you. Perhaps I can be of some assistance. http://www.irvinestone.ca/contact

How To Build A Respectful Workplace: It’s Not A Program

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I recently overheard a manager talking with a colleague about how he was being sent to a “Respectful Workplace Program.” I couldn’t help but interrupt and ask him about it.

“Yes,” he explained. “Everyone in our company is required to attend a one-day training seminar on how to build a respectful workplace.”

Be assured that I am respectful of whoever might, with good intentions, be running a workshop on building respect in an organization. And even without any knowledge of what will be presented in the workshop, I’m sure that this program will undoubtedly bring valuable information.

But with all due respect (pun intended!), respect can’t be taught like mathematics. Building a respectful workplace, like building respect in your home or community doesn’t come from a training program. Respect isn’t about speaking to each other nicely or holding hands or hugging each other. While we could all use a refresher in good manners, respect goes much deeper than techniques or even behavior.

If you want improve a disrespectful workplace you have to get to the root cause of the problem. A respectful workplace is achieved – and sustained – through one critical element: respect for yourself. When you have self-respect you won’t tolerate bullying, inappropriate, disrespectful comments, or people acting unprofessionally. You have the same standards for yourself as you expect from others. When you have respect for yourself you don’t demean others or act in ill-mannered ways. You have better things to do with your time, and you have no interest in being disrespectful to others. You won’t find yourself entangled in hurtful, useless and hurtful arguments. And you won’t let others disrespect you.

Here are four strategies for increasing your level of self-respect. Just as anyone can be a leader, anyone can put these into practice, beginning today. As you do, notice the positive impact and benefit to your workplace by increasing the respect around you.

  • Never make a promise you aren’t prepared to keep. Self-respect, like confidence, is an outcome of right choices, not a prerequisite. Learning to keep promises, whether it is to your child to attend his baseball game or to yourself to keep up good health habits, results in personal integrity. Keeping promises to yourself and others, even in the face of discomfort and the tendency toward complacency, gives you confidence to get through the hard times. As the late Stephen R. Covey used to say, private victory precedes public victory.
  • Create focus in your life. Clarity around your highest values, a sense of purpose, daily disciplines around your health, and an ongoing personal development plan are all ways that contribute to how you feel about yourself. People who respect themselves take care of themselves. And they spend their time being of service to others. When you start paying attention, you will notice that people with focus and clarity in their lives aren’t part of the gossiping crowds. They don’t have time for complaining or blaming others or being a part of disrespectful conversations. They are too busy focused on being useful in the world.
  • Take the high ground. If you are wondering why people yell at you or degrade you or act in disrespectful ways, it’s simple. Because you let them. You don’t have any obligation to tolerate disrespectful behavior. You don’t have to become lazy even if the people you work with are lazy. You don’t have to get involved in ill-mannered arguments. A leader I have high regard for told me once, “Never argue with an idiot because they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Live on the foundation good principles, even if the people around you don’t appreciate it. Do the right thing, because the right thing will make things right inside of you.
  • Be a light, not a judge. The disciples of a Hasidic rabbi approached their spiritual leader with a complaint about the prevalence of evil in the world. Intent upon driving out the forces of iniquity and darkness, they requested that the rabbi counsel them. The rabbi’s response was one that can help us all come to grips with the malevolent forces of darkness that at times seem to surround our world. The rabbi suggested to his students that they take brooms, go down to the basement, and attempt to sweep the darkness from the cellar. The bewildered disciples applied themselves to sweeping out the darkness, but to no avail. The rabbi then advised them to take sticks and beat vigorously at the darkness to drive out the evil. When this likewise failed, he counseled them to again go down to the cellar and to protest against the evil. When this failed as well, he said, “My students, let each of you meet the challenge of darkness by lighting a lamp.” The disciples descended to the cellar and kindled their lights. They looked, and behold! The darkness had been driven out.

Self-respect doesn’t guarantee that others will treat you with respect. What it does do is guarantee that you won’t tolerate disrespect. When disrespect is no longer tolerated, it will soon cease to exist.

I’d love to hear from you about some of your organizational challenges if you are working in a disrespectful workplace or relationship. Send me your thoughts on my contact page. I’d be glad to schedule a complimentary ½ hour session to discuss your situation.