A Path To Better Leadership

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I recently was sitting with a friend while he was conversing with his sister who is single and worried that she won’t find a life-partner. She wanted advice from her brother. As I know them both well, she didn’t mind my listening in. ‘’How can I find a good husband?” she asked.

My friend’s response was, “Try being the kind of person that the kind of person you want, would want to be with.”

Here’s my take on my friend’s suggestion: If I ask, “How do I find the right partner?” before I ask “How do I become a loving person?” the result is likely to be a disaster because I first need to focus my attention on becoming a loving human being. First cultivate a life filled with compassion, and passion will be added to it. Search only for a great passion, and you will likely end up void of love.

Interestingly, this isn’t just a lesson about love; it’s a lesson for life. It’s about accountability. And it’s about leadership. When we ask, “How can we get better leaders – in our organization and in our country?” maybe we’re starting with the wrong question. Instead of seeking better leaders, maybe it’s more helpful to look in the mirror. “How can I be a better leader?” “How can I get better at what I expect from others?”

My notion is that rather than expecting others to be different, the path to better leadership is to be a better leader. We institutionally deny the fact that each of us – through our perceptions and our choices – is creating the culture that we so enjoy complaining about. Deciding that I have created the world around me – and therefore I am the one to step into healing it – is the ultimate act of accountability. Let’s stop complaining and start stepping up.

Building Belonging: The Power of Connection

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When Justin was early in recovery from a brutal, deadly five-year crystal meth addiction, his withdrawal symptoms were debilitating and painful, including excruciating paranoia and an inability to sleep. Some of his paranoia was grounded in reality. He had drug dealers and gang members breathing down his neck.
His grandmother, who was caring for him and desperate to help, asked if he wanted to go to church with her. “Maybe Jesus can help you sleep,” she said one Sunday morning. Justin had no interest in Jesus but liked his grandmother and had nothing else to do, so he went along.
It turned out that he got so bored with the sermon that he fell asleep.
Week after week, he kept going. And every week he would sleep through the service. He became a permanent fixture in the congregation. Often you could hear him snoring, but no one disturbed him. They let him be. In fact, long after the congregation left, Justin would still be lying there, fast asleep. The pastor let him sleep in the chapel all Sunday.
When I asked him why he kept going to church, he said, “It’s the only place I feel safe enough to sleep.” He eventually became an active member in the church community. It was a big part of his recovery journey.
Acceptance of another is not without boundaries, expectations, or consequences; it’s not necessarily about agreement or condoning behaviors that we would not choose for ourselves. Instead, it is a deep and simple respect for another human being. It’s an understanding that transcends judgement, prejudice, and marginalization.
Acceptance is the cornerstone to belonging and becomes part of the foundation of a psychologically safe place to live and work. Our awareness of the importance of psychological safety to create high trust, highly engaged, productive organizations, has increased dramatically in recent years as employees demand better workplace cultures. Building a sense of acceptance and belonging with your team is a critical factor in building a high-performance culture in your organization.
I suggest three critical strategies for ensuring that you are building belonging around you:
  1. Take time to think about belonging on your team. Reflect on whether every team member knows that they belong, that their contribution is recognized and appreciated, and they feel accepted as a valuable member of the team.
  2. Reflect on your own inner state. Pay particular attention to how you handle stress, and how your emotional state creates either tension or inspiration in the people who depend on you.
  3. Look at your own values. Take an honest inventory of how you feel about the people on your team. Examine carefully where you have judgements and how it’s helping or hindering your success.

S-L-O-W-I-N-G D-O-W-N TO THE SPEED OF LIFE  Lessons on Leadership and Life from a Fly Fisherman

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Everything moves in rhythm. Atomic particles, waves of electrons, molecules in wood, rocks, and trees, amoebas, mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, the earth, the moon, the sun, and stars… and we ourselves.

In a world alive with a myriad of rhythms, “entrainment” is the process by which these rhythms synchronize. Rhythmic entrainment is one of the great organizing principles of the world, as inescapable as gravity. And in the fast-paced era of technology, immediate gratification, and on-demand news and entertainment, the heart yearns to find its own rhythm away from the demands of consumption and pressures of the world. As the percussionist Tony Vacca once said, “If you can’t find your rhythm, you can’t find your soul.”

This summer, I experienced finding my own rhythm. I spent a day on the Bow River with Chas Waitt, an inspiring, caring, and human leader on our team, and Dana Lattery, a gifted fly-fishing guide (https://www.flyfishingbowriver.com). As a fly-fishing guide, Dana doesn’t just guide you to the fish. He guides you to yourself. The day wasn’t as much about fly fishing as it was about living connected to my heart, to each other, and to what truly matters.

And it was also a course in leadership. With the tag line, “Love People; Catch Fish,” love and service were integral principles in everything that went down: from the grace in the coffee shop to start the day, to the support, patience, and encouragement in learning to cast and untangling line, to his commitment to stewardship of the river, to how the fish were carefully handled before they were released, and to how I was treated in every interaction.

Here are a few of the lessons on leadership and life from spending a day on the river with Dana and Chas:

1. Leadership, like fly-fishing, requires a relaxed presence of mind. Fly fishing is an extremely complex process that takes time and experience. You don’t have to be perfect, but you miss opportunities if you aren’t present. You must, for example, wait and watch for any sign of movement in the water, mending when needed, and make sure the fishing line drifts naturally and effortlessly. This is the mastery behind guiding that enables Dana to make it look easy. But he’s paid attention for years so he can take his students to the fish with such accuracy it truly seems like magic.
2. You’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. No matter how many fish you catch, they all go back into the river. No matter what you accumulate, accomplish, or achieve in life, it all goes back into the river of life when it’s over. All that ever truly counts in life is the experience you have, the person you become, and the difference you make along the way. Life is lived in the present.
3. You won’t find ego in authentic leadership. Kindness crowds out arrogance. A genuine interest in others and what they care about replaces making yourself look good. Your self-confidence allows others to grow and flourish in an atmosphere of support because you don’t need the approval of others to evaluate yourself or make yourself look better than you are. Even the masters know they aren’t the smartest person on the boat.
4.  Humanity is more important than the illusion of perfection. You don’t have to be perfect or create an appearance of flawlessness to be called a leader. Being human, creating a safe place to make mistakes and learn and grow and be inspired together, is some of what it takes to be a leader.
5. It’s all about showing up. None of this matters if you don’t show up. Accountability isn’t just about being able to be counted on when it’s easy. It’s about being there in the grind. It’s about embracing the suck. Showing up not only earns self-respect. Showing up inspires the respect and love of everyone around you.
6. Service is at the core. Servant leadership is a timeless approach that emphasises your priority as a leader: to attend to the people in your care. You won’t win in the marketplace until you win in the workplace. Take care of your people so they will take care of their people.
7. Fly-fishing is a call to simplicity that makes leadership and life better. The art of being authentic is really the art of being, of knowing and living in harmony with ourselves, connecting with the highest possibilities of our nature. And being connected with our nature requires being connected with nature. This requires stopping, disconnecting from the distractions and demands, and being present to the world around you. The good life and good work require good leisure: not just time that we are not on the job, but that is free from pressing expectations. Simple living doesn’t necessarily mean a quiet life. It can be filled with challenges and excitement. But it is important to take time to go slowly and to do things at the pace they are meant to be experienced – such as when eating a meal, talking with a colleague, returning an email, telling a story to a child, or walking the dog.

Discovering your authentic leadership concerns not the what and how but the who: who we are and the source from which we operate, both individually and collectively. We are clever people, efficient and high-powered, but in the zeal to get things done we can forget our humanity and the simple art of living. Let us make a resolve that we will begin to relax and saunter and be present, and take time to meditate and watch the sun go down behind the hill. Let us be good to ourselves. Let us s-l-o-w d-o-w-n to the speed of life.

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.

REOPENING • REENGAGING • REFOCUSING How To Make The Comeback Better Than The Setback

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As we emerge from COVID-19 restrictions, new challenges lie ahead. I have been asked by many clients to help them navigate the transition into a new reality. Regardless of whether you have been on the frontlines in an essential service or working remotely, the next few months are critical for planning your personal transition into the new reality. There is an opportunity to rebuild team focus, morale, and productivity, and a renewed feeling of belonging as we emerge into a post-pandemic world.
Here’s a few leadership tips to help you make the comeback better than the setback:
Connect Before You Expect. We all need our teams to be productive and focused, especially as we emerge from the disruption. Parenting over the past forty+ years has taught me (the hard way) that leadership in the home and at work is mostly about connection. When children are safe, relaxed, and cared about, they are more willing to receive our guidance and follow through on their responsibilities. Brain science tells us that this is true for all of us. We are all more likely to be accountable when our perspective is taken into consideration. People are emerging from the pandemic with a variety of emotions – anxiety, excitement, fear, loneliness, exhaustion, grief, self-doubt, and everything in between. It’s okay not to be okay. And it’s okay – in fact it is necessary for our well-being – to acknowledge what we are going through, what we’ve been through, and what we are up against going forward. Now is a great time to rebuild connections, listen carefully with compassion and empathy, and take the time to be there. Don’t be afraid of asking people about their mental health status. It’s not about fixing anybody or anything. It’s about community. Connect before you expect.
Think Win-Win. While many of your team are excited to get back into the workplace, many are also as excited to continue to work remotely. While flexibility from leaders will be required, even more important is the commitment to a win-win solution. Take the time to define the needs of the organization and the needs of your team members and make these explicit with everyone. Then take time to create a third alternative that serves both the employee and the organization. Remember – you can’t sink half a ship. You won’t succeed in the long run until everyone succeeds.
Reinforce Personal Responsibility. Personal responsibility is about giving to others what we expect from others. Making this comeback better than the setback means taking personal responsibility to come to work better and stronger than when we left. We all have a part to play in building – and rebuilding – a worthwhile place to work. Accountability isn’t about blaming or finger pointing or fault finding. It’s about taking ownership and recognizing that each of us does our part. Personal responsibility recognizes that waiting for someone to change is never a good strategy.
Make Belonging an Intention.  A sense of belonging, or feeling part of something bigger than ourselves, is a fundamental human need. Knowing that our unique gifts are needed and valued gives us meaning and purpose. When people feel safe to voice their views and to be who they are, are included in decisions that impact them, and are listened to and valued for their perspective, it increases productivity. We all need to be recognized for what we bring and how our contribution and authentic voices and ideas can be powerful and make a difference. A sense of belonging can also mean giving credit when it’s due. You can’t take for granted or assume that everyone feels that they belong. You must be intentional at making it happen. I am committed to making my leadership programs more diverse and inclusive and so I have asked a senior executive from a community services agency whose mother was raised in the residential school system in Canada if she might consider joining and starting the classes of my live-stream masterclass with some smudging, an indigenous prayer, and some teachings from her people.
Attend To Your Authentic Leadership. Authentic leadership means finding your own path and bringing that more fully to the world. As leaders, we spend our lives helping and building others, but do we have an authentic vision for ourselves? Leading authentically requires a strong identity, a compelling sense of self. Thelonious Monk, the jazz musician, said once that “a genius is a person most like themself.” Being an authentic leader is synonymous with being one’s self. It is that simple, and it is also that difficult. The authentic leadership visioning process (which we teach in our masterclass) is about creating something that’s true to your values, to who you are and to your dreams and that will make a lasting impact on the world. It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do. In essence, it’s not what we can do or what we should do, it’s what we want to do or what we may feel called to do. I encourage you to take some uninterrupted time this summer to reflect deeply on what the next ten years of your life would look like if it were aligned with your truest self. Assess the gaps between your vision and your reality and get to work to close those gaps.
Many people have recently asked me whether we are going to emerge from the pandemic as better people and better leaders. My response is a quote from Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”  Ford was referring to the power of belief. Our beliefs are potentially the biggest single force at work in our personal and organizational lives. We all face a fundamental choice as we go forward. You can have trusting beliefs or distrusting beliefs about a problem. The problem remains the same. It’s just how we perceive it. Distrusting beliefs put us in a victim mindset: “There’s nothing we can do. This is horrible. We’re stuck. We’re at the mercy of poor choices and bad leadership.” A trusting belief says, “This is challenging; we were not prepared. But if we stay true to who we are, our values, our vision and our mission; if we treat each other with dignity; if we believe in the spirit of generosity; if we stay true to those beliefs, we can get through this.” Let’s decide to make this comeback better than the setback.

HOW TO EMBRACE CHANGE AUTHENTICALLY

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Authentic leadership is both active and reflective. One has to alternate between participating and observing. I am in the midst of navigating my own way through that journey and feel compelled to share my experiences and perspective with you.

This pandemic is an enormous experiment in shared authenticity. Fear and grief can bring out our worst selves, but, when experienced authentically, they can transform us into our most conscious, caring, courageous selves. We’ve all heard that when one door closes another one opens. What they don’t tell you is that it’s hell in the corridor. Below is a road map for getting through the corridor of the transition we’re all experiencing in our own unique way at this time.
Stage 1. Attachment to the familiar – We’ve all been there. In the context of the current pandemic is the expectation that we are supposed to live in a world free of life-threatening disease.
Stage 2. Foreign Element – The introduction of Covid-19.
Stage 3. Chaos – Grief, loss, denial, confusion, anger, fear, insecurity, betrayal, vulnerability – all part of the process of being thrown into the unknown. Some indicators of chaos are immobilization, irritability, impatience, excessive busyness, feeling overwhelmed, hoarding toilet paper, and a desire to go back to the “good old days” even if the old familiar was not sustainable.
Stage 4. Reflection – We step back and reflect on what this all means, what can we learn, and how can we contribute – out of love, not fear.
Stage 5. Decision – It’s not your abilities that will determine your outcome or show you who you are. It is your choices. Decisions determine your direction.
Stage 6. Rebuilding – You begin creating a new life in the new reality.
Stage 7. Trust – As you work through the process you develop new resources and new capabilities. Self-trust emerges, along with your capacity to trust in the world around you.
Stage 8. New Possibilities – You begin to realize new possibilities for yourself and the world you live in.
Key Principles For Getting Through the Process
1. We are all unique. There is no formula for how long it takes to get through these stages. It is different for everyone. It can take days, months and even years. Some never make it. They get stuck in the chaos. It’s also not a linear process. Like grief and recovery from trauma, it’s messy. We go back and forth. When it comes to getting through the corridor of change, direction is more important than velocity.
2. The four cornerstones of chaos recovery are:
a.Congruence – See, hear, and experience yourself as you are right now, not as you “should” be or are “supposed” to be. What’s important in chaos is to honor whatever experience you are going through. Be present to it. Resist the natural human tendency to want to escape the discomfort of chaos – with busyness, excessive news watching, obsessive internet surfing, and shopping for toilet paper. As we say in trauma work, you have to look the dragon in the eye. Avoiding chaos will, paradoxically, keep you in it.
b.Community – In chaos, it’s also critical to reach out for support and share what’s going on. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Literally and figuratively. Make room for the people in your life you care about and who care about you, even if you need technology to make that happen. Accept that whatever you are experiencing is understandable and acceptable. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to feel. It’s what we do with our experience that will either help or hinder getting through the chaos.
c.Creativity – Even with social distancing, we see people reaching out to each other and coming up with all kinds of creative expressions of the human spirit. This is true in our workplaces and in our lives. Everyone I know is doing extraordinary things – in their own, human, imperfect, caring way. It is incredibly inspiring to be a part of the expression of what it means to be human.
d.Centering – There was a time when farmers of the Great Plains would run a rope from their back door to the barn at the first sign of a blizzard. They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and froze to death, having lost sight of their home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards. We all need a rope to bring us home to our true nature right now. While we embrace change, we also need to know that simultaneously something in our lives remains stable and is preserved. For some, the rope we hang on to is our faith. For others it is keeping structure and routine our life. For some it is being in nature. Where do you find your centre, your place of refuge from the storm?
3. With all change comes sacrifice. There will be loss. There will pain. There will be inconvenience. We all need to be willing to let go of something or someone in our lives. We’d all like this to be different, but unfortunately this isn’t how the universe works. Let’s do what we can to minimize the sacrifice and be sure we get the lesson.
4. Get reliable information. Fear enables people to be manipulated and controlled. Experience fear. Share your fear. But don’t live afraid. This is the dark side of the transition we’re in. No question we need information during chaos; we just have to be sure we are getting it from a trusted source. Don’t believe everything you read in the news, and don’t buy everything you hear. Don’t build a false economy based on fear.
5. Take time for reflection. It’s an old and ironic human habit to run faster when we’ve lost our way. This is a time for all of us to stop and get our bearings. Once you are through the initial shock, intense fear, and grief of the chaos, make time to take stock – of your values, your life purpose, and a vision for yourself. When you honor the chaos in your life and find a community of support around you, you’ll find that renewed wisdom and clarity will emerge.
6. Decisions will determine your destiny. It’s not your abilities or your circumstances that will determine your future; It is your choices that show who you really are and will set the course for your destiny through this. Here are some decisions to consider: Rather than complain about the wind or hope it will change, decide to set your own sails. Decide to be grateful today and look for reasons to choose gratitude. Decide to be a “we” person rather than a “me” person. If you look around it won’t take you long to find something you can do to make the world better today.
7. This is ultimately a time for us all to reinvent ourselves and the way we’ve been living. It’s a time to reshape and renew the world as we have known it. The world is in need of rebalancing. The virus is showing us that we need to create a new way of living. I’m very curious to see what we can create – both personally and collectively, and I’m passionate about doing my part to make it a better place to work and live. The world as we have known it is no longer sustainable. Let’s embrace a new possibility for ourselves and the planet.
8. As we rebuild, we begin to see that this is not an end but a new beginning. Through careful reflection and renewed conscious action we can learn from our mistakes and heed the lessons from this crisis. We can begin to get a glimpse of Bill Gate’s vision, that rather than a great disaster, we can view this as a “great corrector.”
I trust this road map will be useful to you. If you would like a longer version of this process, go to my website for a free Whitepaper on Embracing Change. You’ll also find a variety of other resources:  www.irvinestone.com/free-whitepapers/
More resources from Irvine & Associates
If you and your team would like a complimentary virtual presentation on Embracing Change using the roadmap outlined above, contact our office and we’ll set up a call to design a free session for you:  www.irvinestone.com/contact/
Beginning March 27, my colleague, Ally Stone (www.irvinestone.com/faculty) and I will be creating a weekly podcast – an open-hearted, honest, authentic conversation about what’s happening in our world and how it is impacting our lives and the lives of those we love, how we ourselves are walking through this transition, and ways to better reach the world by being connected to our authentic self. We are going to offer some insights and tools from our own experience and the experience of others to help navigate this journey. Let’s learn together how to lead ourselves and others through not just today’s crisis, but the disruption we will inevitably face in the future.
The podcast series will be part of my regular podcasts: David Irvine – Conversations with Authentic Leaders 
For some of my own perspective on how I’m personally facing the current reality, watch: https://youtu.be/Fgq4TkVS22c
I’m also offering a customized, complimentary virtual program for you or your team or those you serve. To find out more go to: www.irvinestone.com
If you are seeking personal coaching, for a limited time I am offering a complimentary assessment call. If this interests you, contact us at: www.irvinestone.com/contact
Stay tuned for a complimentary e-book that will offer you simple insights and tools for staying connected to your authentic leadership in this time of unprecedented disruption. You will find it on my website very soon: www.irvinestone.com/free-whitepapers
Finally, please be safe. Err on the side of caution. Stay home. Use this opportunity to step back, awaken to your purpose and discover your gifts. And whenever and however you get a chance, express gratitude to our health care professionals and front line workers who are putting their lives on the line every day for us. This virus is humbling us all and reminding us that we all share this human journey – s e p a r a t e l y. I would welcome an opportunity to be a resource for you whenever and however I can.