Tag Archive for: leadership

CIVILITY AMID DIVERSITY  How To Rebuild Trust in A Fractured World

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As Canadians, we were collectively shocked and dismayed at the spate of divisive behavior across this country recently. And now, the crisis in the Ukraine has given our situation in Canada a new perspective. The disunity in our country appears to be indicative of the divisions in our communities, our workplaces, and even our families. It’s been said that a crisis doesn’t determine a person; a crisis reveals a person. Although I’m not sure that we are not any more divided today than we have always been, the dissection has been exposed and amplified.
We used to be able to leave our political, religious, and personal value differences at our office and front doors. But in the pandemic, policies that govern our behaviors with the intent to protect us, have inadvertently divided us.
In short, politics and personal values are now in our face. As teams are balancing a return to the office with remote work, the challenge in front of us is how to rebuild trust in a fractured world.
To rebuild trust requires deep understanding of each other without the need to correct, fix, or “straighten out.” You must get beneath the surface of opinions, positions, views and even values, and connect with the deeper emotions to begin healing what divides us. It’s critical to shift the goal from agreement to understanding. You don’t have to have the same values to value someone. What you do have to do is separate the person from the issue.
Here’s a little model I learned from teams who are debriefing and recovering from trauma. It’s called the SELF model:
Story. Everyone has a story from the pandemic. Let’s take the time to understand each other’s stories that are coming out from the past two years. We just don’t know what people have been through.
Emotions. The past two years have been a form of collective trauma. What emotions have been a part of your experience over this time? What have you had to give up? Where have feelings such as self-doubt, loneliness, fear, excitement, clarity, or anger been a part of your reality? What have you done with these emotions?
Loss. Since the beginning of the pandemic we all lost something and are going through the grief process to some degree. Here are a few losses: our health, a loved one, some of our freedoms, spontaneity, rituals in gatherings like funerals and weddings and church services. I’m not making a judgement. I’m simply stating the obvious and facing reality.
Future. The future depends on the decisions we make today. How will we rebuild? What do we need to feel safe and supported? What needs to be let go of so we can create an opening for change? What do we need to say good-bye to? What decisions need to be made? (e.g. to let go of blame and judgement and resentment; decide to be a contributor instead of a consumer, a builder rather than a destroyer)
A crisis is too significant to be wasted. Let’s embrace this time of difficulty and allow the pain to break us open so a stronger, wiser and kinder self and a better world can emerge.

THE COURAGE OF VULNERABILITY: Inspiring a More Human Organization

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The value of vulnerability and its role in inspiring trust, creating psychological safety, and fostering collaboration and engagement on your team has been underscored in recent years. But a naïve understanding of what it means to be vulnerable can impede your growth, limit your impact, and even blow up in your face.

When a senior VP in a manufacturing organization was promoted, his role substantially increased his accountability. He was nervous about making the leap. He had just learned about vulnerability and so bared his soul to his new team of leaders. In an opening address to his team, he said, “I want to do this job, but I’m scared and shaky and not quite sure I can come through for you. I’m going to need your help.” His candor backfired. He lost credibility and trust with the people who wanted and needed a confident leader to take charge. He was never able to regain the trust of his team and was soon removed from this position.

Let’s start with understanding what vulnerability isn’t. Vulnerability doesn’t mean being weak or submissive or indiscriminately exposing all your hidden fears and flaws. It’s not about falling apart when you need to be standing tall. It’s not about bringing all your insecurities, doubts, and worries to work with you. In short, it’s not about expecting your team to be your therapist.

Simply put, vulnerability is the courage to be yourself. It’s that simple, and it’s also that difficult. Vulnerability lies at the core of authentic leadership and understanding who you are as a person is at the core of vulnerability. Thus, the paradox of vulnerability. You must be real, and you must be stable.

Vulnerability is not a leadership technique or tool. It is a way of being in the world. Vulnerability means replacing “being professional by keeping a distance” with humanity, honesty, respect, and staying calm under pressure.

Vulnerability means:

1. Sharing your values, dreams, and intentions in your work as a leader. I remember a senior leader in the agriculture sector who began her opening speech to her team with slides of her parents farming in Saskatchewan and the values she learned about growing up on the farm. She then shared her vision for this division. Within five minutes she had inspired an entire team of leaders to be completely aligned with her.

2. Being curious and self-aware. Vulnerability means being comfortable with yourself, so you aren’t driven by approval ratings or a need to please. It means being open to learn about yourself and how your behavior impacts others. It means being open to seeing your blind spots, letting go of all blame, and being committed to grow as a leader and as a person. Being vulnerable means you don’t seek power as a way of proving your worth. You know that your worth and security come from within.

3. Having a good support system away from your work. The strength and clarity of vulnerability come from having a place away from work to bring your fears, doubts, and insecurities, so you are free to be human when you get to work. A good support system of confidants, coaches, or therapists provides perspective and a place to fall apart and get put back together again so you can return to your team with civility, compassion, and clarity.

4. Encouraging others. Because vulnerable leaders are comfortable with themselves, they are not threatened by the growth of others. They are open about their appreciation of others. They are humble enough to know they aren’t the smartest person in the room and are wise enough to extract the strength of the members of their team. They are committed to helping people become the best version of themselves.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS IN AN AGE OF ENTITLEMENT

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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  – Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

We all have the ability to choose how we react in our circumstances and given the situations we now find ourselves in, it is helpful to fortify ourselves so we choose wisely. I offer some suggestions to strengthen your mental toughness to help you thrive through these challenging times.

For the past eighteen months through the weariness of COVID, I have been inspired by studying the lives of those who stayed strong and compassionate through the hard times. An impressive example and role model is Nelson Mandela. The longest stretch of Mandela’s twenty-seven years in prison was his eighteen years on Robben Island where he endured harsh conditions in a cell block constructed for political prisoners. Each prisoner had a single seven-foot square cell with a slop bucket, around a concrete courtyard. They were allowed no reading materials and worked crushing stones with a hammer to make gravel in a blindingly bright limestone quarry. He endured and emerged to be one of this century’s most influential leaders.

In addition to being inspired by such stories, I’ve gained strength by becoming a more thoughtful observer of my own life through this journey. Here are six lessons I have learned about mental toughness in an age of comfort and entitlement.

1) Start with a compelling vision. When my father agreed to be my track coach in high school the first thing we did was establish an inspiring goal. As a former nationally ranked gymnast, he could see I didn’t have Olympic talent. But that didn’t stop him from challenging me to have a dream of making the Canadian Olympic team. He would say, “the purpose of having a dream is not to achieve your dream; it’s to inspire you to become the kind of person it takes to achieve your dream.” A compelling vision gives you a reason to have mental toughness. I didn’t get out of bed at 5:00 am to run ten miles in a freezing snowstorm. I got out of bed at 5:00 to prepare for the Olympics. What is your compelling vision?

2) Embrace the grind. When I look back over my sixty-five years, I recognize that the hardest and most frustrating times in my life were also the most formative. Challenges in life are unavoidable. If we help our children accept difficulty as a part of life and instead of making it easier for them, support them through it, they have a greater chance of success as adults. Children who learn to handle their own problems are also the ones who are more apt to thrive as adults. The Chinese saying, “Chi Ku Shi Fu” (eating bitterness is good fortune) highlights the idea that there is the opportunity for wisdom and growth amid misfortune. While we don’t have control over the situations that life will bring to us, we do have a choice of how we react to them. Life is tough. When you can accept and embrace that fact, life is no longer quite so difficult. The 40% rule, first coined by David Goggins, explains that when your mind and body are starting to tire and you feel like giving up, you’re only at forty percent of what you are truly capable of achieving. My dad said it this way: “Don’t pray for the world to get easier; pray instead for the you to get stronger, and then get to work.”

3) Be in it for the long game. Twenty-seven years in prison teaches you many things, but one of the lessons is to play the long game. According to Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, Mandela was impatient as a young man. He wanted change yesterday. Prison taught him to slow down, and it reinforced his sense that haste often leads to error and misjudgement. Above all, he learned how to postpone gratification. Many of us are used to the opposite. Because of our aversion to discomfort, we confuse instant gratification with expressing ourselves. Getting through this pandemic with mental toughness means letting go of our need for immediate relief and trusting – with a firm resolve – that we will come through this – and we’ll be better for it.

4) Find your hidden power by focusing on what you can control. Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, walked with a limp as the result of years of being chained up as a slave. Great thinkers like him knew that the only thing you ever really have control over are your deliberate thoughts. You can’t control other people, you can’t control your situation, and you can’t always control your own body. So, the only thing you do have control over is your emotions, thoughts, and behavior—the essence of mental toughness. A hidden power from within is harnessed when we spend our time on things over which we have complete control: goals, values, and what we do with our thoughts.

5) Keep your heart open. Mental toughness isn’t the same as cold, callous grit. Mental toughness is more like tender courage. It’s realizing that it’s not determination but acceptance that demonstrates strength: letting go of the resistance and the war. And it means finding ways to express kindness at every opportunity. An entrepreneur with anxiety and depression whose business has taken a hit through the pandemic called me last week in an entirely different mood. He was confident and inspired and told me how one morning that week an elderly stranger pulled up beside him and asked for directions. After he found the directions on Google Maps and tried to explain to the stranger how to arrive at his destination, he could tell how confused this poor man was. So, my client then had him follow him as he drove there. This simple act of kindness made his whole day. It’s kindness – not cruelty – that’s going to get us through this.

6) Plant a garden. Even on a remote island, Nelson Mandela needed a place where he could be with himself and find strength. The early days on Robben Island were bleak. The wardens were coarse and abusive. The work was backbreaking. Prisoners were permitted only one visitor and a single letter every six months. So, Mandela decided to plant a garden. In his autobiography, he goes to great length to talk about the meaning it had for him to go through the arduous work of creating a garden amid the obstacles of a prison system, and then carefully nurturing it. It was not a place of retreat but of renewal. “Each of us,” he later explained, “needs something away from the world that gives us pleasure and satisfaction, a place apart… You must find your own garden.”

If you are interested in getting more of my perspective on living through this pandemic with greater mental strength, please join me for my complimentary webinar on Tuesday, October 26th:

Register for 9 AM Mountain Time  

Register for 5 PM Mountain Time

SHAPING THE NEXT CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE – AUTHENTICALLY

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The pandemic has created an opportunity to shine a light on the quality and depth of your life, your leadership, and your relationships. The past several months have been a time of reflection and evaluation to ask questions such as:

  • Where is my career going?
  • Do I really want to spend the rest of my days working seventy hours a week?
  • How can I be a better leader by focusing on what truly matters?

One client talked about how, for the past twenty-five years, she was in the “rhythm of a corporate tune, continually reacting to the demands of others.” She said, “Now is the time to find my own new rhythm.”

I offer some strategies for moving into the next chapter of your life as you settle into the new reality which will likely be with us long-term:

  1. Decide to see this as an opportunity. Choices have great power to determine the outcome of your life.
  2. Make room to step back, pull out a journal, and answer some questions:
  • What’s been working well in your life?
  • What areas are not flowing/working well?
  • Where might you be over-accommodating, compromising yourself, and burning out?
  • What parts of your life have you felt most excited/passionate about?
  • What do you feel called to do?
  • What might need to shift/change/end?
  1. Reach for your why – your reason for being – an inspiring purpose for getting out of bed in the morning.
  2. Reflect on your most important values.
  3. Consider your unique abilities, talents, and gifts that set you apart from the crowd.
  4. Plan on how you will contribute and serve the world over the next five to ten years.
  5. Include your loved ones in your plans and intentions.

Authentically shaping the next chapter of your life, whether you stay in your current role, decide to renew it, make a transition to a new role or even a new career, or are considering what retirement might look like, requires careful and conscious attention. From time to time, we all drift away from our true nature. When we realign with our authentic self, we amplify our positive impact as a leader and create meaning and purpose in our life.

If you want to learn ways to shape the next chapter of your life in alignment with your authentic self, please join me for a complimentary one-hour webinar on September 23. This – and more – will be included in the webinar and in my upcoming virtual Life In Transitions course.

The webinar is offered at 9 am MT and 5 pm MT. Register now to make sure you get a seat!

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.

LOOKING INTO THE SHADOWS: How Turning On The Light Can Nurture Psychological Safety

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“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don’t know we are in.”  – William Shakespeare
An executive I am coaching recently shared his 360 data where his direct reports expressed that they didn’t feel safe around him; that his unpredictable volatility and insensitivity created an environment that was not conducive to engagement and high performance. He believed that their response was an excuse for poor performance, and they lacked a solid work ethic, using the current remote working environment to “cop out.”
It’s not easy to hear tough feedback and see our blind spots, but it’s essential in personal and professional growth. We are in an era of daily change and uncertainty. This is a time for leaders to create and protect the space for everyone to feel psychologically safe. The first step in cultivating that environment is to reflect on ourselves as leaders – and that begins with understanding and accepting those uncomfortable truths, which I refer to as shadow work. Psychological safety around us begins with psychological safety within us.
While it’s often encouraged to focus on the light, it doesn’t make the dark go away.
The dark is just on the other side, waiting for a time to show its face. And if we don’t have the courage to bring it into the light of our awareness, we can inadvertently hurt ourselves or others. Shadow work, in its simplest form, is looking inward for what we had hidden earlier in our lives, and gradually healing those aspects of ourselves. Kimberly Fosu speaks about this in her blog, Shadow Work: A Simple Guide to Transcending The Darker Aspects of Yourself.
Let’s say that a girl is born with a strong sense of self. She knows who she is; she knows what she likes and doesn’t like; she asks for what she wants and she isn’t afraid to speak her mind! She is a strong little girl, but she is raised in a family that doesn’t know what to do with her spirit and constantly tells her to tone it down because it’s “too much.”
In order to survive, she rejects the parts of herself that are strong and confident. She grows up to be quiet, sweet, and obedient. Then, when she turns forty, she doesn’t understand why her life is so painful. The truth is, she suppressed important aspects of herself and thus feels divided. She won’t be able to feel psychologically safe – or fully create safety around her – until she does her shadow work to discover and embrace who she was meant to be.
Here’s a few things we know about shadow work:
1. It takes courage to meet with your shadow. 
When you start shadow work, you may feel the resistance you felt as a child, and the desire to keep suppressing these aspects of yourself. To become aware of something, you have to choose to see it. We are unaware of the shadow in the same way we can’t see in the darkness – we often even coach children to not be afraid of the dark. Once you turn on the light of awareness and embrace the hidden aspects of yourself that seem to be extremely uncomfortable, you open your eyes to a whole new side of yourself that you had no idea existed. If you are worried about what you might find, there is probably something important you don’t want to revisit. Instead of continuing to avoid it, you can see it as one more reason to do shadow work. This work is necessary if you want to be an authentic leader and fully realize your capacity to impact the world.
2. Become aware of your shadow. 
Ask yourself: “Was I completely accepted as a child? How did I feel most of the time? What was expected of me and what behaviors and emotions were judged by the people who raised me?” Your response to those behaviors that were judged created a shadow aspect within you. The answers to these questions will open the door to what is hidden. The shadow often finds roots in your childhood. The most important step in doing shadow work is to become aware of what is concealed. Shine a light on it to bring it out of the darkness. No matter how long you avoid looking at your shadow self, it will keep manifesting into your reality until you pay attention to it. The self that is fractured seeks to become unified, and we will be presented with opportunities to see the aspects of ourselves we have suppressed, rejected, denied, and disowned. The more you become aware of your shadow self and embrace it with some compassion, the freer you are to welcome your authentic self.
3. Shadow work is about making the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable acceptable. 
We become adults and feel we should be able to handle life better, yet we often keep falling into the same unhealthy patterns. That’s because the shadow operates outside of our conscious awareness, in the form of unconscious and limiting beliefs. The goal of shadow work is integration and appreciation – fully seeing and embracing all the aspects of yourself that make you who you are. Within your wounds lie some of your greatest and most important gifts that have yet to be unearthed.
4. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.  
Acceptance is a requirement. The minute you say something about you is “bad,” you have a reason to suppress, ignore, and deny it. Once you become aware of your shadow self, don’t shame it or blame it. Instead, give it your full acceptance. Your shadow was born from non-acceptance and rejection in the first place. It was created the moment you began to push it away. Antagonizing the shadow even more only adds fuel to the fire. The shadow is part of who you are, so look at it from a place of appreciation. Everyone has gone through a difficult time in their life that created shadows within them. Make peace with your shadow so you can find peace. Shadow work is a great way to experience inner healing and transformation through self-awareness and self-acceptance.
5. Recognize – and appreciate – triggers.
Have you ever met the most gentle, sweetest, and kind person, and in the blink of an eye something happens, and this person turns into someone else? They become mean and scary; they throw a huge tantrum or freak out. The shadow part took over when they got triggered. Triggers have the power to turn lives upside down and destroy the most cherished relationships. They spark a highly charged emotional reaction and are messengers from your shadow self. They are reflections of deep unresolved wounds that you have suppressed.  See your triggers as an invitation to delve deeper into things you are unaware of.
We are constantly evolving as leaders. Our awareness evolves as well as our ability to respond to that awareness. The authentic journey is just that – a journey into becoming more fully who we are. It’s not a destination. It’s a method of travel. While working with the shadow is about integration, you can never be completely integrated. It’s a life-long journey. Embrace it with awareness and self-compassion. Doing shadow-work means coming to know and accepting these hidden aspects of ourselves that, at some point down the road, will result in authentic self-acceptance and genuine compassion for others. In the words of Dumbledore: “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”