Mindset/Inspiration
The Leadership Tool Most Leaders Are Scared to Use…
As a Leadership Engineer and full time federal employee, I live in the same world as the people I most want to serve and support. And for the past few weeks, it has been a real challenge.
For those of you who are familiar with my work, you know that I focus on the idea that when you are doing the work that you are ideally suited to do, the work that takes advantage of your highest “gifts,” (skills, abilities, talents, experiences and desires) your unique natural leadership abilities will come out on their own to be gently tweaked and refined according to the needs of your role and your mission. Well, I confess, recently I was having a hard time believing what I teach. In one instance I’d worked for hours on a project only to have it completely ignored. When I approached my supervisor to ask if he had questions or concerns because he hadn’t moved it along, he simply said, “it isn’t on my priority list right now.” About the same time I learned that my organization had recently changed their policy on tour extensions (something they frequently do but usually provide some generous loopholes), and this time there would be no consideration for extensions and no opportunity for discussion. These highlights were cherries on top of a new unit chief who was “in the shorts” of the first line managers to the point that they were refusing to exercise any initiative without specific instruction for fear of being reprimanded or second-guessed. (Does this sound familiar to any of you, or am I the only one who ever experiences this?)
At the same time that I am feeling all of the frustration, disappointment, anger, physical fatigue, headache and muscle tension of working in that situation, I was also coaching clients. Specifically encouraging them to notice how they were feeling (mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually) because those feelings were indicators of alignment and clues to their best next steps. Yet I couldn’t seem to do it for myself. I felt like a hypocrite, a liar, and a fraud. (Not a really good operating place for a leader, an employee, or a coach.)
That said, there are a few things I know without question:
- Life, especially the Conscious Leader’s life, is not a flat road. Frankly, it is a road through the Himalayas. There are awe-inspiring peaks and deep, dark, cold valleys. You can’t have one without the other.
- Every truly successful leader has a coach through whom the leader has committed to invest in himself. Sometimes the coach GUIDES the leader through the Himalayas, and sometimes the coach ALLOWS the leader to find her own way.
- Not every problem can or should be FIXED. Some problems, much like a virus, just need to run their course.
My coach was deliberately “allowing” me to find my own way through an unrelated problem when I suddenly realized that I had the solution to both problems. The solution was the one leadership tool that most leaders are scared…absolutely terrified…to use. The tool is called Stop Pushing. Just stop.
Throughout our careers we’ve been taught that influencing others and having an impact on the mission is the hallmark of our success. We go to classes to learn to set goals and develop action plans to achieve those goals. We then take additional classes to learn to manage our time and increase our productivity. In a different venue we learn that we should be happy and positive all the time so when we don’t feel that way, we push ourselves to “fix our attitude.” We learn to push and push and PUSH. The one thing that we don’t learn is WHEN TO STOP PUSHING! What is astounding is that when we strategically learn to STOP PUSHING and allow ourselves to be PULLED, potentially in a direction that we might have initially judged as inappropriate, we see opportunities that never existed before. Instead of resisting our efforts, exactly the right people become our partners, and everything that was impossible before becomes easy.
I should warn you that this is an advanced level tool. That’s why most leaders are too scared to use it. There is a big difference between abdicating your responsibility or “selling your soul to the devil” and strategically choosing to allow yourself to be pulled. The art comes in knowing exactly what that difference is and when to use the tool. These past few weeks were the reminder that I needed to take my own medicine and STOP PUSHING.
3 Key Elements to BE the Change
Mahatma Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We’ve all heard that a thousand times. Yet have you ever stopped to consider the implications of truly BEING the change? For the Conscious Leader, BEING the change is a tall order, and it requires 3 key elements that may not be immediately obvious. These elements, while difficult for some to master, are the building blocks for the Conscious Leader.
Key Element 1: The Conscious Leader is Open to Change. As leaders we often say that our organization needs to change this or that. So we gather data that demonstrates to the organization how its current way of being is ineffective and how being different would “improve” it. We begin a campaign to make the organization be open to change whether it wants to or not.
The Conscious Leader realizes that in order for the organization to be open to change, the leader himself must be open to change…open to seeing things differently. Interestingly, organizations are composed of …well…individual humans. In order for the organization to change, the individual humans inside the organization must be open to change. The individual humans must be open to evolution and growth not only within the construct of the organization but throughout the larger realm of their lives. As the Conscious Leader develops his own personal openness to change and growth, the organization around him becomes open to change and growth.
Key Element 2: The Conscious Leader does not waste energy DOING the change. Many organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on employee engagement surveys. The results come back indicating that engagement is lower than desired, and employees complain about feedback, assignment and promotion processes, and evaluation systems. So organizations institute classes on feedback and career development, mandate review processes, and track the number of conversations that supervisors have with employees. A year later they do another survey and discover that the results have not changed. What happened? The members of the organization wasted time, energy and money DOING the change, not BEING it.
The Conscious Leader recognizes that BEING must come BEFORE DOING. The difference is very subtle and very powerful. Providing feedback and career development conversations will not create an organization with highly engaged employees. DOING the change. Rather an organization with highly engaged employees will automatically provide helpful feedback and develop powerful career development processes that work for everyone. The Conscious Leader knows that the only way to create an organization composed of highly engaged employees is to become one himself…BEFORE asking or expecting it of others. BEING the change.
Key Element 3: The Conscious Leader does not WAIT ON change. This may be the most difficult element of all. It can be easy to say, “This job will get better when I get a [newsupervisor/budget/office/the regs change/my husband’s job lets us move]. When [that thing] happens, I will have a job I love. Until then I’ll tolerate things as they are.” News Flash: When you tolerate a job that does not make your heart sing, you cannot offer your highest and best self. Yes, you may work very hard, and you will be doing the best that you can…in that situation. But it will NOT be the best that you are truly capable of. With each day that goes by, you will sell a larger piece of your soul for the sake of a paycheck. In some cultures, they call that prostitution.
The Conscious Leader does not wait for things to change around her. She acknowledges that the change she seeks is already inside her and makes choices, large and small, in support of the change. She acts AS IF the change she wanted has already happened…AS IF she already has a boss she loves (and interacts with the current one in that manner); AS IF she already has the new office (and maintains the old one accordingly). As she consistently chooses in favor of those things that are most aligned with the world she wants to see, she BECOMES the change.
Would you like to use this article in your newsletter or ezine? You can so long as you include the complete blurb below:
If your “government service” is starting to feel more like “government servitude,” Leadership Architect Martha Austin will show you innovative yet simple shifts to transform the bureaucracy you hate into the mission you love so you can make more money, have more fun, and contribute more to the world. Get more FREE tips at www.freegiftfrommartha.com.
The Lesson of the Frozen Shoulder: Nature’s Navigation System at Work
Many of you have heard me talk about Nature’s Navigation System that will keep us on track to be the positive, effective, impactful leaders that we are each designed to be. The system itself is really quite simple, yet many of us don’t use it or don’t use it well. Why? Because we are human and it is easy for us to ignore, drown out or cover up the “alert tone” when it goes off. In the Conscious Leadership Blueprint Virtual Bootcamp™ we spend an entire module on Nature’s Guidance System. For now, I just want to give you three quick tips you can use right away.
Tip One: NOTICE: Does something feel just a little off? In the case of my shoulder, I had felt it pop and grind inexplicably for more than 6 months. The same thing happens in other areas of our lives. You may begin to dread going to work or snap at your kids more frequently or realize that you aren’t getting the results you used to get or expected from your team. These are all ALERT TONES from your navigation system. Pay attention to them!
Tip Two: CHECK YOUR ALIGNMENT: When the ALERT TONE goes off, it is time to stop what you are doing and check your alignment. Truly identify what is the source of the alert. So often, like I did with my shoulder, we choose to ignore the warning signs. We think that if we just ignore the situation perhaps it will work itself out. As the alert tone continues to sound, and become progressively more annoying, some of us will try to push through it. Others of us will do more of what we have always done in the past. When we choose to ignore the alert tones, the misalignment does not go away. It’s impact becomes more severe.
Tip Three: SEEK ASSISTANCE FROM A PROFESSIONAL: Even though I understood what was wrong with my shoulder, it was physically impossible for me to treat it myself. Only with the assistance of a trained physical therapist was it possible for me to achieve the deep stretching required to free my shoulder. The same is true of misalignments in other areas of life. If it were possible for us to correct our misalignment alone, we would have done that already. For some, even figuring out where the misalignment is can be a challenge. Regardless, the longer you continue doing things that are not aligned with your gifts, the louder the alert tone becomes and the more difficult the misalignment is to fix. As one client said to me last week, “Martha, I have a stack of books as high as my waist. Why can’t I figure this out?” It’s the same reason that I can’t stretch my shoulder sufficiently without the physical therapist, we are all restricted by our previous experiences. It takes someone else to stretch us past what we can do for ourselves in order to reach our full potential and allow our natural leadership abilities to emerge.
To explore if and how you could use a good stretch, I invite you to schedule a complimentary Leadership Design Consultation with me by clicking this link and completing the application.
Would you like to use this article in your newsletter or ezine? You can so long as you include the complete blurb below:
If your “government service” is starting to feel more like “government servitude,” Leadership Architect Martha Austin will show you innovative yet simple shifts to transform the bureaucracy you hate into the mission you love so you can make more money, have more fun, and contribute more to the world. Get more FREE tips at www.freegiftfrommartha.com.
Letting Go of “Should”
Think about the last time that you felt angry, disappointed, frustrated, confused, stressed or depressed. Try to remember what was going on in your head, or perhaps coming out your mouth, when you felt that way. Odds are it was some version of, “it SHOULDn’t be this way. This was not SUPPOSED to happen.”
When we find ourselves feeling any of the uncomfortable emotions mentioned above, it is usually a good sign that we are, in the words of Byron Katie, “arguing with reality.” Meaning, the version of the world that we are experiencing isn’t matching up with what we wanted. Or phrased a different way, the way we thought it SHOULD be.
For me that last statement used to fall in the category of “No Kidding (or other expletive).” I was fully aware of the fact that the world was not operating the way that I thought it should. Therefore, it was up to me to change it, right? Interestingly, the harder I tried to force something to be different than it was, the worse I felt and the less the situation improved. It was as if I thought I could make the rain not fall, or I could make people think, feel, believe, or act differently than they did.
Another interesting realization was that I applied this same standard of perfection to myself. I know that many of you have been cautioned against, “shoulding” all over yourself. Many of us hear the voice in our heads saying, “You know you should exercise more. You should let Ron know that you appreciated his staying late yesterday to finish the project. You should not be so judgmental. Blah. Blah. Blah.” And, just as I couldn’t make the rain not fall in the paragraph above, I couldn’t seem to squeeze anything more out of myself either. I would manage to handle one “should” and there would be three others that I simply missed. I was tired, overwhelmed and stressed and reality still “was.”
There is another way to approach life when it shows up differently than you expected. While the concept is very simple, the practice itself is somewhat counterintuitive and tends to bring up all our doubts, fears and expectations. Within the Conscious Leadership Blueprint™ we devote an entire module to Letting Go of “Should” and embracing the special opportunities that only show up when things turn out differently than what we had expected or planned. For now, I would offer you this experiment. The next time you feel yourself getting uncomfortable, ask yourself, “what specifically is not matching your idea of the way things are “supposed” to be?” Then, ask yourself, “How would I be different if I knew that this is exactly what was supposed to happen?” When you try this experiment, please join me and the other Conscious Leaders on Facebook and tell us what you noticed, experienced or learned?
Would you like to use this article in your newsletter or ezine? You can so long as you include the complete blurb below:
If your “government service” is starting to feel more like “government servitude,” Leadership Architect Martha Austin will show you innovative yet simple shifts to transform the bureaucracy you hate into the mission you love so you can make more money, have more fun, and contribute more to the world. Get more FREE tips at www.freegiftfrommartha.com.
The Importance of Clarity
This article was first publish in February 2013.
Last month we talked about setting clear intentions, and we talked about how to state those intentions to make them powerful. At the same time, I realized that we never talked about why having clear intentions is so important in the first place. Did you know that the primary reason that we have things in our lives that we do NOT want is because we are not clear on what we DO want? (Yes, I know. Some of you are uncomfortable with this statement already. Just keep reading.)
The Importance Of Clarity
1. Clarity is Power: When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and ONLY to the extent that you are clear. Fuzzy intentions get fuzzy results. When you are crystal clear on exactly what you want to see in your life, your decision-making process becomes easy. When we find ourselves having difficulty making a decision, odds are that we are not clear on some aspect of what we are trying to create. For example, I may say that I want to have a successful career. How do I measure that? By annual income? By global impact? Or by the impact I have on my health and my family? Until I know the answers to those questions, I can’t be clear on what I want from my career and, therefore, can’t know what choice is best for me.
2. Creation begins in the mind. Look around you. Everything made by man was an idea in someone’s mind BEFORE it came into existence. The machine that allows you to read this newsletter from anywhere in the world as soon as I have sent it was an idea in someone’s mind before it was created. An architect begins with an image in her mind and then translates that image into a detailed drawing. Without the image, there is no drawing and without the detailed drawing, the beautiful building could never be created.
3. Clarity comes in the journey, not the destination: In a sense, we can never be completely clear on exactly what we are trying to create because with each additional level of clarity, we discover that yet another level is possible. Just as the architect above discovers additional elements that can be refined before her
building is complete, (anyone who has ever done a home remodel knows what I’m talking about here) each of us will discover that there is always one more detail to be added. Before you get discouraged and wonder, “then why should I even bother with clarity?” I want to note that as long as you continue to choose in favor of the things that mean the most to you, even as you get progressively more clear on what those things are, you will never go backwards. As my life partner, a day trader, says, “as long as you are making a profit, no matter how small, you will never go broke.” The same is true for clarity, as long as you are getting progressively closer to the things that matter most to you, you will never live in misery.
4. Clarity is the basis for focus: As you move through each day, the world around you demands your attention: the ringing phone, dinging email, insistent boss, over-flowing in-box. You can choose to focus your attention on the wheel that squeaks the loudest, OR you can choose to focus your attention on the exact, specific outcome you want to create. Without clarity, your subconscious mind gets distracted in the blurry spots. We wander off track and find ourselves devoting a great deal of personal time and energy in something that doesn’t matter to us. The next thing we know we are burned out, tired, physically ill, and wondering what happened.
5. The last thought: Remember, whatever you want to create in your life or your work is completely up to you. You can choose to invest in yourself to create the life you want, shape the future of your organization, and make the difference you wanted to make in the world. Or, you can wait for your organization to decide if or
how your work matters and help them maintain the status quo. Choosing to “do nothing” is, in fact, a choice in favor of allowing someone else to decide what matters to you.
Would you like to use this article in your newsletter or ezine? You can so long as you include the complete blurb below:
If your “government service” is starting to feel more like “government servitude,” Leadership Architect Martha Austin will show you innovative yet simple shifts to transform the bureaucracy you hate into the mission you love so you can make more money, have more fun, and contribute more to the world. Get more FREE tips at www.freegiftfrommartha.com.
The 5 P’s of Intention
This article was first published in January 2013.
Your intentions are…
1. Personal: These are the things that matter to you. They are your desires, your passions, your loves. No one else can tell you what matters to you because they don’t know. Others may tell you “you can’t do that” “you shouldn’t want that” “you wouldn’t really like that” and while they mean well, they are standing on THEIR path to THEIR purpose. Not yours. This is all about you.
2. Present Tense: Write your intentions using an “ing” action verb as if it is happening now. For example, instead of saying, “I will enjoy perfect health” say “I am enjoying perfect health.” If your intention is languaged in the future, it will always remain in the future. It can never become NOW because your subconscious mind only processes information in present time.
3. Positive: Your intentions should be a statement of what you DO want rather than what you DON’T want. Again, the subconscious mind does not process the concept of negatives. Be careful with this one, because a negative statement can show up even when the word “no/not” is not there. For example, “I am living debt free.” That sounds pretty good, right? No, negative words there. But wait, the subconscious can’t process the absence of something. So all it hears is “I am living in debt.” To remedy this problem, turn the statement around to what you do want. “I am paying all my bills on time and have money left over” or “I work only when I want to.”
4. Pointed: As you are able to sharpen the specific details of your intention, it becomes progressively more clear. The clarity comes from the specifics. For example, perhaps your intention sounds something like, “I am spending time with my family.” Ok. Does that mean that you are all sitting in the same room, glaring at each other? Are you fighting? Are you simply sharing space and ignoring each other? Clearly state what you really love. For example, “I am in complete, intimate partnership with my spouse” or “I am having fun with my closest friends” or “my children freely share the details of their day with me.”
5. Powerful: Think big! So often we refuse to even state an intention because we can’t see how such a thing could be possible. When it comes to intentions, “HOW” is not your job. Only the “WHAT” is your job. The “how” belongs to the universe, God, your higher self, whatever you call it according to your beliefs. If you can think it, it is possible. It is not up to you to know or understand how it would happen. Remember Thomas Edison, that guy with the light bulb. Yeah, him. His high school teacher told him that he was too stupid to learn anything. Yet he saw a vision in his mind of a means to create light without the use of an open flame. What do you think his high school teacher might have said if he told her about that vision?
Once you have your intentions, write them on a card and post the card where you will see it regularly. Then come join us on Facebook and tell us, “What did you discover as you made your list?”
Would you like to use this article in your newsletter or ezine? You can so long as you include the complete blurb below:
If your “government service” is starting to feel more like “government servitude,” Leadership Architect Martha Austin will show you innovative yet simple shifts to transform the bureaucracy you hate into the mission you love so you can make more money, have more fun, and contribute more to the world. Get more FREE tips at www.freegiftfrommartha.com