Joelle K. Jay

Joelle Jay

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Go to the Calendar

Having trouble getting everything done? Come along with me on a trip. We’re going to the calendar.

“Going to the calendar” is a strategy I often recommend for leaders who want to make changes but aren’t quite sure they’ll be able to stick to them. Going to the calendar means literally

  • opening up your calendar,
  • turning on the PDA,
  • getting out your schedule,

or in any other way physically putting in front of you the written, concrete system you use to organize your life. Then you write down the commitments you’ve made, transferring them from your head to the page where they become real.

For example, Gloria wanted to set up what she called “Customer Contact” hours five hours a week, during which the only thing she would do would be to circulate among the customers in the winery she ran to discover what their experience was like. After three weeks of “flaking out,” as she put it, I made her go to the calendar and schedule those five hours a week. She wrote “Customer Contact” between four and five o’clock each day for the rest of the year. From them on, customer contact wasn’t just a good idea, it was an appointment she was scheduled to do. Her calendar never let her forget.

This strategy is most helpful if you use a calendar system that matches your strengths. Most calendars are arranged into tidy hour-sized boxes into which you’re supposed to compartmentalize your life. When you go to the calendar, give yourself permission to break out of the boxes. Just as you can control your time, you can also control your calendar. Don’t let it control you. Some examples:

Ann:    Every year I get a fresh paper calendar. I claim the days I want for myself and block them out with an opaque permanent marker. Then I use those “blackout dates” however I choose.

Nico:   Once I took a whole month of pages out right out my calendar. I had been wanting to take a vacation, but somehow it always got bumped. When the pages weren’t there, the time stayed free and for once I actually took that vacation.

Rick:    I gave a list of times to my assistant that I wanted to keep free for working on projects. Now my assistant turns down all requests for my time that interfere with those parameters.

Mitch:  My PDA locked me into a very linear way of thinking. Now I do all of my planning on a white board where I can scribble and draw and make diagrams; later I pin the ideas down into the system.

Peter:   I don’t like calendars at all. I think in terms of projects. I started a project wall where I can pin up all my action plans instead.  If you want to maximize your time, you do need to keep track of it by going to the calendar. You decide what that calendar should be.

Exercise

Think of something you’ve been wanting to do to achieve your vision. Go to the calendar now and figure out how you can make it happen. Be sure to put it in writing.

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

 

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Moving from Chaos to Control

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon. You’re standing in the middle of your office. Hands on your hips, you deliberate about what to do now. Do you sit down and sling out a rash of emails? Do you return a few phone calls? Or do you close your door and somehow try to concentrate on the big project you really need to work on? Frozen, you are immobilized by the possibilities. You drift off for a minute, staring off into space. Then you catch yourself and snap back into action.

The rest of the day you spend busily working. You pull out a project, then the phone rings and sets you off in another direction. You keep on top of your emails and other people’s requests as best you can in an attempt to keep the deluge at bay. Head down, you fly through tasks and manage the crises, barely looking up to notice the time until finally, the day comes to an end.

Driving home, you’re spent. The day has been intense and full; you take satisfaction in enumerating all you’ve done. Then you realize even though you’ve been busy all day, you haven’t really done anything. You’ve been so buried, you’ve lost sight of your grander vision. You find yourself being haunted by vague, unanswerable questions. Could I be doing better than this? Is this what I wanted for my life? Am I making any difference? Somehow answering these questions never gets to the top of the list. Why is that? Your mind drifts off, hypnotized by the traffic and whirring about what you need to do tomorrow.

Have you ever had this experience? Ironically, even though you may be working all day, you never feel like you get anything done. You’re busy but not necessarily productive. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if you’re doing the right things. Not that you have a choice; you’re too swamped with what you have to do today to dwell for long on what you want to do or ought to do to be more effective. Still. You know there’s something wrong with this picture.

And you’re right. There is. What’s wrong is that when you bounce along from task to task, you’re not choosing where to put your attention. You’re living by chance and not by choice. You may be ignoring the most valuable parts of your life – the parts that are going to help you achieve your vision, possibly in the long term and definitely for today. Or, you may be doing many of the right things, but you’re not really sure. You haven’t stopped moving long enough to check. Plus, there are so many priorities, you find it hard to keep them all straight, much less stay on top of them all at once.

In order to get what you want, in order to be who you want to be, in order to live the kind of life you want to live and lead the way you want to lead, you need to be more strategic than that. You need to find focus.

Finding Focus is one of the ideas I share with leaders in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

By finding focus, you’re going to pull your thoughts out of the crowded rabble of your mind and give them the attention they deserve. Get ready to move from chaos to control.

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Snapshots

In my work as an executive coach, I often work with leaders around their visions – their visions for their companies, their teams, even themselves. However, in the stress and striving over the years, sometimes that vision can seem awfully far away.

Here’s a process you can use to rediscover to your long term vision and connect it to your reality today. I call it “taking snapshots,” because the process is akin to taking in a panoramic view and then snapping a photo to take with you as a reminder.

  1. Remind yourself of the long-term vision you want for your life and leadership in the future.
  2. Zoom in on the near-term vision of your life today.
  3. Ask yourself, how does what I’m doing today connect to the overall picture of my vision?

You can even take this one step further. Ask yourself a handful of questions as a follow-up.

  • Where am I now with respect to my long term vision?
  • How will things be different then – when I reach this vision?
  • When I do finally reach my vision, how will I know? What will be the indicators that I’ve arrived where I wanted to be?

In the same way you can snap a photograph to get a concrete reminder of something you’ve seen, by writing these answers down you can have a concrete reminder of your vision. This is your “snapshot” of your vision.
There’s a FREE Worksheet on my website that you can use to organize your thoughts. You’ll find it at www.TheInnerEdge.com – click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left) – and scroll down to the Worksheet called The Snapshot.

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Look Under the Rug

Have you ever wished you had more time to do what you need to do?

“Ha!” You say. “How many times a day?!”

Me, too. And then I remember – oh, wait. I do have more time. I have all the time I need. And so do you.

So where is it? You’ve got to find it. In you.

There’s a process for increasing your productivity. In order to get more out of your efforts, you’ve got squeeze every moment out of your energy. Find the shortcuts. Eliminate the distractions. Expand the time you need for the things that really matter.

To do this, you’ve got to be creative. It’s the same process you’d use to look at your expenses if you suddenly decided you wanted to go on vacation. You look closely at the details and find that little extra – and a little more – and maybe a big chunk over here – until you amass the money you need and Hawaii, here you come. Only now, you’re trying to save up your time.

Saly Glassman, Senior Vice President-Investments at Merrill Lynch, is a master of this. She is a financial advisor who has been listed consistently in the top third of the Barron’s 100 Financial Advisors. With a successful family business, two daughters, dogs, horses, and a few little hobbies (like enjoying a lovely 60-mile bike ride), she knows what it means to make the most of her time. Here’s what she says.

You’re looking for every angle you can get more productivity. You have to go into every little corner and look under the rug to see if there’s anything in here.

So where do you look? Try here.

Time checking email Time cooking and cleaning Time on the phone
Time in traffic Time shopping Time reading
Time running errands Time in meetings Time writing

Every single one of these can be eliminated – not just reduced; eliminated – if you get creative.

What are you waiting for? There’s no time to lose.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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The Road to Heaven is Paved with Good Intentions

“Intentions” have gotten a bad rap, no thanks to that old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” There’s actually something quite heavenly about setting an intention and having it fulfilled.

In coaching jargon, an “intention” is a concise statement summarizing a state of mind about who you intend to be, even in the midst of the changes and challenges of leadership. It starts with “I am” and ends with a value. A few examples:

“I am independent and confident.”
“I am courageous.”
“I am generous and compassionate.”

Each of these intentions describes a mindset you might choose at any given moment.

Leaders often set intentions when they need to stay cool in an intense situation, when they’re too busy to stay focused on what’s important to them, or when they are trying to make changes in their thinking. As you go through the stormy parts of life, your intentions anchor you to your values.

Why set an intention? Intentions shift your thinking away from negative self-defeating or counterproductive thoughts, and replace them with a mindset more aligned with your values. They also help you reframe a situation so you can choose how to act, think, and be for the best possible result. To give a few examples of leaders who have chosen intentions:

  • When Ryan, a corporate CFO, had to cut expenses, he set the intention to be resourceful and creative.
  • When Lei, a business owner, had to confront an angry customer, she the intention to be calm.
  • When David, an exhausted new dad, had to make an important presentation, he set the intention to be alert and focused.

An intention reframes the way you see a situation so that you can approach it in the best possible way – consciously choosing how to act, think, and be. Your intention has the power to change your perspective, open your mind, and shift your experience.

To create your intention, start by asking yourself, Who do I want to be as a leader? How do I want to experience my life? How do I want other people to experience me? What mindset or perspective do I want to hold? By purposefully choosing who you want to be, you enter leadership with the best of intentions.

Exercise

Practice setting an intention for an upcoming event – anything from your next meeting to a difficult interaction, to an evening at home. Use the Your Intentions worksheet in The Extension as a guide.

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview or Order Now.

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Having the Clarity to Get What You Want

William

In the heart of the Silicon Valley, deep in the middle of an office park, a lone light shone in an office on the 17th floor. Inside, William sat alone at his desk. He looked at the clock. Ten p.m.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he thought to himself. “This is ridiculous.” He’d started his day at four this morning. Another eighteen hour day.

He turned back to his computer. Staring back at him was the report he’d been working on since six. After seventeen years at this high-tech firm, William had become a regional general manager for product development. At his company, he had both power and prestige. Most days William had an enviable job: flying the company jet from coast to coast, dining with powerful people in fancy restaurants, and trying out flashy new gadgets. But tonight, all of that seemed empty. He thought regretfully of his ten-year-old soccer player at home and the game he’d missed this evening. He loved his job, but at the end of the day, he felt like just another suit working away his life.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth, the new head of her accounting division for a pharmaceutical company, dashed into her office. The nine-thirty meeting she’d just left had been exciting, but it had left her with plenty to do. Since she’d just gotten this promotion, she felt eager to impress, but suddenly she felt like she’d overcommitted. She wished she could just sit down for half an hour and collect her thoughts, organize her notes, and make sure she hadn’t missed anything. But no time for that. She dumped the stack of papers she was carrying onto the desk.

“Ugh,” she thought. “The pile grows!” She grabbed another stack and hurried out. Onto the ten-thirty meeting.

Grant

Grant had a lot to be proud of. The founder and chief cardiologist of the Southwest Center for Heart Health and Wellness, he was totally invested in its success. The Heart Center had been his idea. He’d dreamed it up, secured the funding, and built the organization from the ground up. Now doctors were seeing patients and the research was underway. Three years after opening its doors, the center was a respected organization for care and research. Grant was as inspired as ever.

“What’s next for us?” Grant wondered, his mind buzzing with ideas. “A bigger grant, a research breakthrough, a new wing? Maybe we need new staff or a high-profile teaching fellow…”

With so many possibilities, Grant barely knew where to start. Suddenly he felt overwhelmed. His heart started to race. He could see so much potential, and he wanted to do it all, right now! But he was only one man, and a cardiologist at that, not an organizational expert. He knew he needed to find a way to make the Heart Center thrive.

“But,” he asked himself, “how do I do that?” He stopped walking. “Seriously. How do I?”

What William, Elizabeth, and Grant have in common is that, despite their success, they all want something more. William wants something more for his life. Elizabeth wants something more for her job. Grant wants something more for his organization. The problem is none of these leaders exactly know what their “more” is. So they keep doing what so many people do: slog through the work with their heads down, ignoring that vague, unsettled feeling that they are not truly being the leaders they could be or leading the kinds of lives they want to live.

Perhaps you’ve felt the same way. You can be motivated, driven, and extremely busy and yet still not be as clear as you could be about exactly what it is you want.

What do you want? A promotion? Time for yourself? Better relationships with your friends and family? That ever-elusive work/life balance? None of these are possible unless you stop moving long enough to figure out what you’re after. Explore your ideas. Envision a different reality. In order to achieve success in your life and as a leader, you need clarity about what you really want.

How to get that clarity is one of the ideas I share with leaders in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

In The Inner Edge, you will get that clarity. Ultimately, you are not just going to become clearer about what you want. You’re actually going to get it.

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You & Improved

Do you have an ideal vision of yourself – the “you” you would like to be if only you could find the time…or had the right opportunities…or were given the right information…or made the right decisions? What would it be like to finally live that life? There’s actually a strategy you can use to help bring that vision into reality. I call it simply envisioning the future. Like a daydream, with meaning. In your mind, you see yourself succeeding: you…and improved.

Envisioning is not fantasizing; quite the opposite, it’s a practical, efficient technique to get clarity instantly by tapping into these rich stores of knowledge that sometimes get obscured in the chaos of daily life.

To envision your future, close your eyes and imagine yourself exactly where you want to be as a leader and in your life. Here are the steps.

Prepare. Set the context. What, specifically, do you want to envision?

Relax. Envisioning always works best when you are relaxed. Before you rush off to envision your future, slow down. Breathe.

Envision. Now imagine yourself at the time and place of your choosing – whatever and whenever it was you said you wanted to envision – and really see yourself there. Take it all in, using all of your senses and emotions, observing what it’s like to be you…then. Now take yourself on a tour. As if you were walking the scenes of a movie set, you move from one image to another. Your work. Your career. Your home life. You see it all while you’re there, visiting your future.

That’s it! Easy. When you’ve “looked around” this future vision of yourself, take time to debrief and interpret what you saw.

  • What surprised you?
  • Was there anything missing?
  • How did it feel?

Questions like these help you anchor the images while they’re fresh in your mind.

You can get additional insight by interpreting the images you saw. Recall the details and think about what they might mean.

Finally, to find out how this process has clarified your ideas about what you want, write down the answer to this final question: “When you have achieved what you want to achieve…when you have become who you want to be…when you have done what you want to do…what will be true for you?” Keep what you write. This is your vision.

Would you like to try this exercise in more depth? I’ve put up a FREE audio recording in my own voice that you can use to do this visualization the “real” way, with your eyes closed and a coach walking you through the process slowly. You will find it at www.TheInnerEdge.com and clicking on Worksheets and Audios (on the left). Look for the You and Improved Visualization Audio. Enjoy the process!

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The Five Ways Leaders Lose Their Edge

A leader’s ability to sustain a high level of effectiveness is one of the biggest contributors to the company’s overall success. Unfortunately, not every leader can maintain that commitment. Why? Here are five indicators that leaders are losing their edge..

1. They ignore the vision.
Having a vision means you’re clear about what you want. You can connect to an inner source of inspiration that will call you forth and compel you to achieve your goals. Who do you want to be as a leader? What do you want to achieve?

2. They lose their focus.
Once you know your vision and what you want to achieve as a leader, stay focused on it. Finding focus is about choosing where to put your time, energy and attention. If you really want what you say you want, what areas do you have to focus on to get it?

3. They take inefficient action.
After you decide where to focus, make sure your daily action plans reflect that priority. Stop asking, “How can I do everything I need to do in a day?” and start asking, “What are the most effective actions I can take to move toward my vision?” Take those actions now.

4. They do things the hard way.
In business and in life, you always have a choice. You can continue to do things the hard way, the usual way, the way you’ve always done them. Or, you can do things your way – the way you were made to do them. Find and leverage your strengths. Where are you especially talented? What are you recognized for? What do you love to do?

5. They become disconnected from their work.
Finding fulfillment and alignment with your work means understanding what you’re striving for. The meaning. The purpose. When you lack fulfillment, you lose your edge. Your energy goes down while your stress goes up. To reconnect, consider what you want from your work. Do you want to be happy? Are you trying to reach your full potential? Do you hope to make a difference? Do you want to feel at peace? These are some of the experiences leaders seek when they seek “success.” The key to finding fulfillment at work is to identify what success means to you – not the results but the spirit of a life well lived.

Reclaim Your Leadership Edge

Avoiding common mistakes like these helps leaders lay the foundation for exceptional leadership results. You will put yourself on the path to becoming the kind of leader who changes the world … the kind of leader others will follow … the kind of leader you were meant to be.

You can join other leaders in “getting an edge” by reading The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. Join the Inner Edge Community and be a part of the book club!

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Identification, Please?

Who are you as a leader? I don’t mean your title, I mean, what kind of a leader are you?

At IBM, Senior Vice President of Human Resources Randy MacDonald shares this advice: “Do not cast yourself in the image of what a leader is supposed to do.” What makes you powerful is developing the image of who you want to be as a leader.

As an individual, it’s important for you be clear about what kind of a leader you are. Everyone is a leader in some way. Throughout this eCourse, I will be referring to “leaders,” and I do not just mean presidents and CEOs. I mean you.

A business or corporate leader. Corporate leaders often hold leadership positions in their organizations: president, vice president, director, manager, or supervisor. You may even own the company. But you can also serve as a leader in your company even without the fancy title by the way you act and interact.

A professional leader. You can be a leader in your profession whether you are a consultant, entrepreneur, or an independent professional like an attorney, speaker, or physician.

A community leader. You may have a leadership role in public service, as a non-profit board member, in your church, with the Girl or Boy Scouts, or in your neighborhood.

A family leader. As a mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, grandparent or cousin, you may take an active part in creating your family environment.

An inspirational leader. You may be a leader among your friends, family and fans by the way you conduct yourself – as reflected by your character, your choices, and your demeanor.

A thought leader. You could be leading change with original ideas and new ways of thinking.

An action leader. Maybe you’re the one with the energy to make things happen and the charisma to get others to do the same.

The leader of your own life. No matter who you are or what you do, you get to take the lead in your life. No one else will do that for you. No one else can. You may or may not have a fancy suit, a name plate on the door, and an assistant just outside. But every single one of us is leading a life, which may be the most exciting kind of leadership of all.

In what ways are you a leader?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Look for the Perfect

“Everything works out for the best.”

“If it’s meant to be, it will happen.”

Have you ever uttered these words? While many people believe at some level that “things happen for a reason,” they act as though they don’t trust the idea. If it really is true that that everything works out for the best, then every situation is perfect in some way.

Here’s an example.

Zach, an attorney, discovered this when he learned his business partner, Kareem, was leaving the practice. Zach and Kareem had built a business from scratch; he thought growing it big was what they both wanted. But people change. Kareem changed. He didn’t want a business anymore. He didn’t want the headache and the pressure. Now he just wanted to join a bigger firm, not build one.

Zach was determined to talk him out of it. He tried everything to help Kareem see the possibilities, and he tried to see every possibility for himself. But Kareem’s answer was no. He had decided. He was leaving.

After the emotions subsided (anger, resentment, denial, and determination), Zach took the practice over by himself.

“Well, at least one positive thing came out of this,” Zach thought as he signed the documents. “Now I get to be president.”

But Zach got to be a lot more than that. As he started to shoulder the practice on his own, he became more confident as a businessman. He took the practice in his own direction. He made bold decisions, branched out and hired more attorneys. The business grew, as did his reputation and profits. Best of all, he maintained a friendship with Kareem, who stayed in his corner – no longer employed by the business but still rooting for its success.

Zach didn’t know when Kareem said “no” to the business that the business was saying “yes” to Zach. A situation that at first seems to be a disaster can actually turn out to be perfect.

Looking for the perfect is especially helpful when you get an untimely surprise.

  • Benjamin got the promotion he wanted a year before he felt ready.
  • Enrique was awarded a giant contract the same year he was planning to retire.
  • Martina, the next-in-line for a public office, had to step into the job when an elected official had to step down for personal reasons.
  • Neal found out that after years of family planning, he and his wife were about to have not one, not two, but three babies.

In each of these situations, leaders were able to reframe a situation that initially felt wrong by believing it must have to be right. They looked for the perfect.

Believing life might be perfect as it is doesn’t mean you play a passive role in your life. You are still leading your life; you are still becoming the leader you want to be and creating your vision. But you’re doing so with an open mind, realizing that for reasons we don’t understand, some things might be “right” for us that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves. Other things might be “wrong” for us even if we thought they were right.

Sometimes we find the opportunities we’re looking for, but other times those opportunities find us.

Exercise

  • Recall a time in your life when you got a “no” or “yes” that you weren’t expecting – maybe unanticipated (good or bad) news or a surprising change in direction.
  • How did the situation work out?
  • In hindsight, what was perfect?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.