Four habits of highly effective leaders? They aren’t what you think.

Colleagues,

MVP: When times are bad, you need to double down on taking care of yourself. It is the first step to taking care of others.

Note: This week’s messages are about leading in highly stressed organizations. I will be breaking my 300-word limit this week. Don’t feel compelled to read this week’s messages if they don’t apply to you. Look at the MVP and decide, and don’t feel guilty for not reading. Priorities, right?

We’ve used two models to establish that an organization I’m working with is experiencing extreme turbulence due to misalignment in multiple organizational dimensions.

Once everyone in the organization understands and can describe the situation in common language, we can begin to do something about it. Remember, our goal is to make things “suck less” not to fix stuff.

Four things we can do:
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First, we need to take care of ourselves. Earlier this year I discussed four essentials:

1. Build a support network
2. Create and execute a great morning routine
3. Build habits to be able to cleanly transition from work to home
4. Schedule time for reflection

In the midst of chaos, all of those things become more difficult, and the less we do them, the less resilience we have and the less able we are to begin each day in our best condition. If we aren’t at our best and aren’t able to bring our A game, how can we lead an organization out of the hardest of circumstances?

Second, by understanding the situation, we should be able to help leaders stop judging the people they lead in negative terms. When things are bad, virtually nobody is going to be bringing their A game (including you if you don’t invest in self-care 😉), and some people may struggle to bring even their C game. Under stress, it can be natural for leaders to focus on people who are underperforming and put pressure on them to improve, but this is counterproductive as people are already under extreme pressure. Adding more just makes it worse.

Third, when we stop judging, we can begin to focus on understanding, and when we understand, we can begin to make incremental improvements.

Fourth, when we bring our A game, we can bring our calm and our presence. We can be still and present with others, and create a calming effect on the situation. This is the step which moves us from reacting to responding. Presence also allows us to be better listeners and, in the listening, we will begin to find opportunities to make baby steps towards alignment.

Today’s intention: Think about the relationship between self-care and being able to be calm and fully present for others.

Cheers!

Frederick
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