Joelle K. Jay

Blog

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The Control Room

One morning as the anchors of the Today show discussed a breaking human interest story, weatherman Al Roker kept throwing in remarkably relevant statistics and factoids. At one point, the anchors turned to Roker and ribbed him about his superhuman knowledge. Roker turned to the audience and winked.

“We don’t actually need to know anything! We just have to have a control room!”

Although Roker was joking, he made a good point. He and the Today show producers whispering into his earphone know something many of us have yet to learn: no one person can know everything. Certainly no one person can run a whole show. And yet, that’s exactly what many leaders try to do, day after day.

Wouldn’t life be easier if we all had a control room – someone whispering in our ears what we need to know just when we need to know it? Whether it’s a producer delivering the details into a reporter’s ear, a coach yelling to his players on the field, the President’s personal advisor helping him make world-changing decisions, or the wise words of a mentor guiding you through a critical moment, the best leaders surround themselves with people who support them. You will, too, by building your personal team.

You might have aspects of this team in place. Friends, colleagues and mentors probably already support you in your personal goals and aspirations. Your next step is to learn how to strengthen that support into a complete, custom, comprehensive personal support team. With your personal team in place, you will find new answers coming to you from those who want to see you succeed as much as you do. You will no longer be one person with big dreams going it alone.

Building your Personal Support Team 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.

When you learn to build your most powerful personal support time, you will become a veritable force, championed by some of the best leaders around.

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The Imaginary Advisory Board

Imagine you had the best leaders in the world all advising you? You’d have access to the leaders who are most relevant to you now, who are experts in the kind of success you want to achieve and who have attained the highest respect and regard in their fields. Your every challenge, overcome. Let’s create that for you now. It’s called the Imaginary Advisory Board, and it can be yours with just a little imagination.

This idea originated with author Napoleon Hill. Hill was a protégé of Andrew Carnegie who spent twenty years studying wealth creation from such masters of fortune as Henry Ford, Charles M. Schwab, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. (Talk about a dream team!) His research culminated in the 1960 classic Think and Grow Rich. Even if your ultimate vision has nothing to do with wealth creation per se, the idea of Hill’s “imaginary advisory board” offers an abundance of possibility.

An imaginary advisory board is a group of people who can inspire and guide you toward your vision of yourself as a leader and in your life. The difference is they don’t actually exist.

Actually, that’s not quite true. They may exist or they may not, but unless you are extremely well-connected or capable of time-travel, the chances of sitting down with them for a conversation are slim either because you don’t know them or they because they’re no longer living. The members of your imaginary advisory board are typically:

  • historical figures
  • legends in their own time
  • famous people in your field
  • characters from fiction and non-fiction
  • religious leaders
  • ancestors.

Your imaginary advisory board might also include people with whom you don’t usually talk about your aspirations and achievements, but who represent the values you hold dear:

  • spiritual guides
  • your children and parents
  • good friends past and present
  • other people who have had a hand in shaping your life.

In this way you can gather in one place the characteristics you admire most – your mother’s wisdom, your bosses’ clarity, your mentor’s way of being direct yet empathetic – and use them to help you live and lead well.

Once you’ve assembled your “board of directors,” in your mind you can pose your questions to them. Think about what they’d advise. Think about how they would do what you’re trying to do, and learn from them. You’ll be amazed at the wisdom and creativity that comes from thinking this way.

At first, you may feel silly and even childish meeting with your imaginary advisory board. But this “board” will allow you to do something no other group can do: bring all of your values and aspirations into one place, personified by a significant someone. Even though you can’t be with them, you can still aspire to be like them.

To do this process more completely from the beginning, go to the website and download your FREE copy of the Imaginary Advisory Board Planning Guide. You’ll find it at www.TheInnerEdge.com – click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left) – and scroll down to find it.

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Your Biggest Enemy

What would you guess is the biggest enemy of a leader? Wasted time? Indecisiveness? Short-sightedness? Go ahead, try it. List the enemies that fight your ability to lead and live the way you want to in your ideal vision.

Now, what will you do to take away its power?

For Charlene Begley, the President and CEO Enterprise Solutions of General Electric,
the biggest enemy is wasted time. Listen to how she tackles time, wrestles it to the ground, pins it down tight and takes control.

Especially in these tough times, I’m huge on being very focused and setting clear priorities. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. So I pick the three to five things that really matter, and I’m really disciplined about spending time on those things. I can’t do everything, so I have to make tough choices.

I literally sit down with the calendar and say, what do I really care about now? I care about our new products being launched on time. So I make that the priority. I create the time for the business teams to me on a regular basis with status. That’s where I spend my time.

I pick the things that matter to me and put them on my calendar. I never say I wasted the day, because I carefully plan my calendar. Time is my biggest enemy. I have three kids. Life is crazy. There’s never enough time in the day. So I manage my calendar. I mange the time I spend, and I set operating mechanisms to be sure I’m spending time with the things that really matter: employees, customers, my team, the key initiatives.

I am obsessed with my calendar. I take the time. I could tell you right now what I am going to do [six months from now]. It’s actually a little frightening, but it works! I have the whole year planned out. I still have to be flexible, but that includes putting on the calendar the things that matter to my kids. The school plays, the sporting events. I plan really carefully so I’m home when the things that really matter are happening, I’m there. And if I’m not, I plan the special occasions to make up for lost time.

Listening to Charlene, you can really get a sense of her diligence. Whether your biggest enemy is time, procrastination, busy-ness, a tight budget, a dysfunctional team, or any of the other terrors with which leaders grapple, how can you be equally aggressive in making sure you overcome it?

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 sign up for the course.

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Project 123

Overwhelmed? Can’t get ahead? Feel like you’re slipping further and further behind and that you may never catch up? I know the feeling, and fortunately, I have a great remedy.

It’s called Project 123, and it arose from a time I was redecorating my house.

My friend and decorator, Lesley Means of Simply Organized arrived one afternoon to help me redo a room. One room. We sat in that room, the living room, and talked about ideas. Before we knew what was happening, we had moved to another room (more ideas) and another (more ideas) and another (still more). In an hour we had whipped ourselves into a fervor of bathroom remodels and office reorganization and new paint on every wall. When she left, I closed the door, turned around, and thought, “What just happened? And where will we ever start?” It felt so overwhelming, I just walked away and left it all behind.

The next day, Lesley emailed me her project proposal. It said in big letters, PROJECT ONE: The Living Room.

Oh, yes. Project One.

The living room was my original motivation for calling Lesley. She remembered when I had forgotten. There was one priority. A place to start. Later, we could move to Project Two (the TV room) and Project Three (the home office). The way she crystallized our plans into a logical order, they all made sense again, and we tackled them one at a time.

When you get overwhelmed by all of the complex and multiplying tasks competing for your time, it can help to sit back and identify Project One, Two, and Three. George Leonard of Mastery captures the essence of this strategy well. He writes, “Ultimately, liberation comes through the acceptance of limits. You can’t do everything, but you can do one thing, and then another, and then another.”

You can use this strategy to choose one focus area or one action item to tackle along the way to your vision. Keep sight of which project you’ll grant top priority, and give it the best of your time. Then you can turn to the rest.

Exercise
Jot down a quick list of all of the projects you have going right now: Now number them in priority order. How would it change your efficiency if you could think of these as “Projects 1, 2, 3,” etc. and complete one at a time?

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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Get off the Fast Track – Find the Shortcut

As a culture, we once had a reasonable relationship with time. Think about your parents and grandparents reflecting on their childhood; so often they reminisce that “life was slower then.”

Then we got on the fast track. The implication was that those who were going to “win” were the ones who were moving fast. “Faster” equaled more efficient, more productive, and therefore more successful. We practiced new techniques with our planners and PDAs to get more done in a day. “Fast” became synonymous with “better” – an association we have been paying for ever since.

Now we’ve moved from the fast track to warp speed. We keep trying to somehow fast-forward ourselves to do more and more, faster and faster all at once and all the time. In some cases the pace becomes absurd as we try to do more of what we’ve always done faster than is humanly possible. But there’s a limit to our capacity. Even if you see yourself as a Porsche in the fast lane of life, Porsches can only go so fast. At some point you’re going to crash. In order to avoid breaking down, we need to stop trying to go faster and faster and cross into a new way of thinking altogether. We don’t need to go faster from Point A to Point B. What we need is a portal. A trap door. A shortcut.

Physicists call it a wormhole – a way to link distant points in space that would otherwise take years, decades, or centuries to travel even at the speed of light. To get the image of a wormhole, imagine a worm traveling over the skin of an apple. To get to the opposite side, the worm can traveling the entire distance around (the long way), or he could take a shortcut by burrowing through its center (the short way). To date, wormholes are more science fiction than science, but the image can help us rethink what’s possible with time.

Maximizing Time 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!

You, too, can become a time traveler, slipping through time using shortcuts that lead almost instantly to a new way of life. To do that, you’ve got to shift your thinking. It’s time to get off the “fast track” and learn to find the shortcuts.

 

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Time for a Change

How many times a day do you think to yourself, “I just I had more time!” We all know we only have the time we’ve been given on this earth to do with what we will, and yet we spend most of our time wishing it were otherwise.

We need to learn to think differently about time.

It’s not as if we haven’t been trying. Time management courses have been around for decades, and work/life balance has become a cliché. e talk and talk about new ways to manage time, do things faster, tinker with our calendars and apply technology to squeeze more into a twenty-four-hour day.

But it’s not working. We’re busier than ever, and it seems to be getting worse. High standards, coupled with an uncompromising work ethic, demanding bosses, business growth, job promotions, new technology, day-to-day operations, future planning, business travel, innovation, competition, family obligations, and the details of daily life all combine to create the kind of pressure that, as one leader put it, makes it hard to breathe. All of us who suffer a scarcity of time must learn to be more effective in our use of time or risk becoming victims of our own success.

The fact is, you will never have control of your time unless you take control of your time. That means stopping long enough to get a handle on what’s happening, reflecting on whether it’s working, and learning new ways to maximize the time you’ve got. Rethinking your relationship to time takes an open mind, it takes commitment, and (ironically) it takes time. But the investment you make in maximizing your time will pay you back hour after precious hour.
Are you ready to start Maximizing Your Time? Here’s a place to start.
Get a blank sheet of paper and map out Your Ideal Day. What would it look like if you had all the time you need?
Doing this exercise can be the first step in redesigning your time and your life so you do have more time for the things that are important in your life. But don’t stop there. You can design your Ideal Week, your Ideal Month, and even your Ideal Year. Here’s why it works. If you can see the model on paper, you are going to be able to create it in reality.

To make this easy for you, I’ve created a one-page form you can use to map out your Ideal Day. It’s absolutely free, and it’s available on www.TheInnerEdge.com. Click on Worksheets and Audios on the left and scroll down to find The Ideal Day.

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Extend Trust

Of all my mentors, one who springs to mind in surprising moments is Stephen M.R. Covey, the author of the bestselling book The Speed of Trust.

Stephen believes that trust is the underlying foundation of every relationship, including the relationship you have with yourself. It’s time now to make a commitment you can trust yourself to keep.

Having read now about a variety of ways leaders get an edge, are you going to do what you need to do to get an edge, too? What can you promise yourself now? It’s important for you to give thought now to what’s going to be different. Make an action plan. Make a change. Make a commitment.

And while you’re at it, support someone else along the way. You have it in you to not just be a great leader, but to create great leadership in others. You can be a model. You can teach what you know.

Stephen once told me, “The first job of leader is to inspire trust. The second job is to extend it.”

I hope that some of the leaders you’ve read about in this space have inspired you with their message, and I’m grateful that you put your trust in me to share it. Now how will you extend it to others?

Think about who you know that’s trying to achieve. It might be a student. A direct report. Your boss. The visionary leader of your company. Your kids. Your sister or a friend. Who needs to know what you know, and how can you share it?

And please, let me know if I can help. At www.TheInnerEdge.com, there are books, workbooks, eBooks, a thriving community of leaders, and coaching opportunities all designed for you. It’s our job to help you.

So you can get an edge.

 

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The 5 Ds

Do you have a stack?

You know the one. The stack of files waiting for your attention. The stack of messages. The stack of emails in your inbox.

How will you ever get through them you wonder? Never fear – You now have a solution. Allow me to introduce to you “The 5 Ds.”

I originally learned the 5 Ds come from business coach Kevin Lawrence, and they go like this:

1. Do It
2. Delete It
3. Delegate It
4. Decide on It
5. Date It

The “it” in this case is usually some small task or action item. Every time you have to get through a stack of email, a stack of paper, a stack of voice mail messages, or just stacks and stacks of work, The 5 Ds work especially well. You will drastically cut the time you need to get through the stack, and you can then get to the other high-impact activities that make the best use of your time.

Do It means do it now. Use this for any task that takes fifteen minutes or less.

Delete It means there are some things that do not require your response. Just because someone sent you the message/document/suggestion doesn’t mean you have to reply. If an item doesn’t advance a relationship or achieve an important goal, get rid of it.

Delegate It means pass it on to someone else who can handle the job. They don’t have to do it better than you; they don’t even have to do it as well or as fast. They probably won’t. But unless it’s a top priority or specific result that you and only you can deliver, you’re not the right person. Pass it on. Don’t abdicate the responsibility; you still need to be sure the task gets done. This is not a game of hot potato. It’s a way of reorganizing work so the right people do the appropriate jobs for maximum efficiency and results.

Decide On It means no more moving items from one stack to another, telling yourself, “I’ll get back to that.” Will you attend the meeting or won’t you? Will you agree to that request or won’t you? Make a decision. Move on.

Date It means you get to choose when you will give big-ticket items your undivided time and attention. Figure out how much time you need and block it out in your schedule. You can forget about it until then.

Exercise

Write a mini-version of the 5 Ds on a sticky note and put it near a stack of papers, projects, emails or administrative tasks. Set aside some time to tackle the tasks using the 5 Ds. Notice how the 5s cut down the time it takes to finish the tasks.

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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Let Them Hit You

When you go looking for feedback, do you get feedback from the people who will give you the bad news?

Go ahead. Let them hit you.

Don’t worry – it’s not as bad as you think. Actually, one of the smartest things we can do is to ask for feedback from the people who don’t think all that much of us. The ones who are mad at us. Who are thorns in our side.

It’s not just because you’re going to get an enlightening perspective. (And oh, you will!) It’s also because the simple act of asking for feedback can improve the relationship.

Says Dave Norton, a senior vice president at The New York Times,

It’s so disarming. When you turn around and ask feedback from the people who wreck havoc in your world, it facilitates dialogue. It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s genuinely asking you for your opinion. Just the act of asking communicates trust.

When you go to look for feedback, ask yourself, who around me will give me the best feedback? Who will give me the worst? Who will give me a perspective I’ve probably never heard before?

Then go ask them. Easiest way: ask three questions.

  • What am I doing that’s working?
  • What am I doing that’s not working?
  • What one thing do you think I should work on to improve?

You may find those enemies were on your side all along.

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 for more information.

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Beliefs of a Leader

Your beliefs are a powerful driving force that can work for you or against you. Some beliefs empower you, while others limit you. By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can keep the ones that serve you, weed out the ones that don’t, and choose the ones that will support who you want to be.

Here’s an example. A common belief of busy leaders is, “I have to work hard to get ahead.” Immediately the limitations of this belief are apparent. Working from this belief implies that you must sacrifice parts of your life (home life, health, and hobbies come to mind) to “get ahead.”

Now consider this belief instead: “I have to be my best to get ahead.” This belief is more empowering, because it opens up the possibilities. It still accepts the potential for working hard if that is what’s required, but it also allows for the fact that getting ahead sometimes means taking time for the rest and renewal that keeps you at your best.

An example can illustrate how to turn a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Andy was the president of a structural engineering firm who was raised to believe that if you compliment people too much, they become lazy. He was afraid to commend his team, because he believed that to do so would take away all motivation. His belief limited his ability to praise the people who worked for him, and they were becoming bitter and resentful.

To turn the situation around, Andy studied his limiting belief:

“If I praise people too much, they will become lazy.”

As long as he believed this, he would never be the supportive leader his firm needed. He could see that unless he tried something new, he was going to lose support. He tried this empowering belief instead:

“If I praise people more, they will become inspired.”

Andy rehearsed his new belief by trying it out 100 times. Every time he hesitated to praise someone, he stated his empowering belief to himself and gave them a sincere compliment. Before long, the results – a more agreeable, cooperative staff – convinced him to retain the new belief.

Beliefs are fundamental to the way your life plays out. The difference between a limiting and an empowering belief is quite literally the difference between a limited and a powerful life. Choose your beliefs carefully. They make you who you are.

Developing empowering beliefs is a three-step process.

  1. Become aware of your beliefs. You can go after them directly by asking yourself, “What do I believe,” or you can go after them directly by noticing your behavior and asking yourself, “What would I have to believe to behave this way?”
  2. Write down your beliefs. Take a look at them on paper with some objectivity. For each one, ask yourself, Is this belief limiting or empowering?
  3. Turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Just change the words, looking for the exact opposite of your limiting belief to find one that’s more empowering.

The process of distilling your beliefs takes time. Allow yourself time to try on different beliefs and see what fits and what doesn’t. Notice when you feel limited and deflated, and when you feel expansive and energized. Keep working with the wording of your beliefs until you’ve created the ones that you can claim with conviction—the beliefs that will help you be the leader you really want to be.

 

Exercise
Use the Your Beliefs worksheet in The Extension to identify a few beliefs that guide your thinking and actions. Assess them. Are they limiting or empowering? How could you develop new beliefs to help you achieve your vision?

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.