Joelle K. Jay

leadership

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Best of the Blog: June Edition

As I resume blogging again I want to move forward with a new initiative: a “Best of the Blog” round-up for each month. Putting a practice from The Inner Edge to good use, it is my hope that the monthly round-up will help you embody the eigth practice I outline – to keep learning! We’re often so innundated with information that it becomes difficult to absorb the information we read in any given day, or even week or month.

Jack Welch said: “Good leaders are, by definition, voracious learners.”

So in the spirit of learning and leading, read on for five key takeaways from the blog over the last few months:

 

How to lead from within. From the post “5 Practices for Leading from Within,” I shared five practices from The Inner Edge that you can use to lead well and live well, too. In short, the practices are to help leaders find clarity to determine what both short-term and long-term success looks like; to find focus in order to keep your attention on the action items that are top priority when it comes to achieving that success; to take effective action so that you can determine what action items are best to tackle in a day instead of spinning your wheels all day; to tap into your own brilliance in order to not only find out what your unique strengths are, but to find out what practices will bring out those strengths; and to feel fulfillment in a way that enriches your life, and allows you to discover and take responsibility for your own gifts.

 

What is your identity as a leader? In “Identification, Please?” I list many types of leaders, and ask you to be honest with yourself to identity what you can take away from each type. The types include: A business or corporate leader, a professional leader, a community leader, a family leader, an inspiration leader, a thought leader, an action leader, and the leader of your own life. What makes you powerful is developing the image of who you want to be as a leader. The leadership types will help you to sharpen your focus to find out which type of leader you are, and the leader you want to become.

 

Find out what “the secret wish” is. One of my favorite questions to ask clients is: “What is your secret wish?” In the post “The Secret Wish,” I share an exercise to help you find out exactly what your secret wish is. Simply open a spare notebook, turn the page and reflect. Anything is possible. Think about it. Write about it. Dream. Some wishes are easier to grant than others. Simply stating that wish can be enough to help you hone in on what you need to do to make it a reality, even within the same day. Others can take several years to come true, and some never do. But more often than not, just saying the words aloud makes them come alive.

 

How to have it all by defining your “all.” In “Having It All” I expose one of the surefire ways to have it all: find out what your “all” is! So many people ask if it’s possible to have it all. Some people say yes, some people say no. To me, it’s the wrong question altogether. To me, the answer to the question, “Is it possible to have it all?” is not yes or no. It’s simply: “Do you know what your ‘all’ is?” If you can clearly define your “all” in a way that is grounded, realistic, and optimistic, most likely you can have it. If you define your “all” as some unattainable ideal that amounts to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then you might not. In the post I lead with an exercise to help you define your “all.”

 

Open up to the spirit of possibility. In “The Spirit of Possibility” I help you channel your own potential and infinite possibility. The only way to know what those are is to trust in more intuitive ways of knowing, being and becoming who you want to be – not just by working your life away, but by learning to wish, hope, think, pray, and be in a different kind of way. Author William Bloom, a meditation master and expert in the field of holistic development, offers a helpful definition of spirituality as “that whole reality and dimension which is bigger, more creative, more loving, more powerful, more visionary, more wise, more mysterious – than materialistic daily human existence.”

 

 

Leaders are busy, and usually the way we read when we’re busy is the first time we skim, the second time we form an opinion, and the third time we really take in what we read. Let this round-up be your quick guide to learning, and leading, well as we move into July!

 

 

You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.

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5 Practices for Leading from Within

With the World Business Executive Coach Summit underway I have been thinking a lot about the critical components that go into leadership, and how leaders can use those components to better both themselves and their business.

In the past few years leaders have been presented with a new set of challenges as businesses have been hit hard with a talent crunch, a generational shift, and an economic downturn, and that’s all on top of the usual 21st century challenges of globalization, innovation, and technology. Leaders must rise to the challenge. They must, and they will. But in order to do so successfully, they must learn to not only lead their organizations, but also lead themselves. They must learn to practice personal leadership.

Personal leadership is the leadership of the self. It is the ability to define a direction for your life and leadership, and to move in that direction with consistency and clarity over time. In a positive, unselfish way, personal leadership means putting yourself first. Literally speaking, personal means “about you;” leadership means “coming first.” When you practice personal leadership, you “lead from the ‘inside out.’” The process involves asking yourself, “How do I need to be and act and think in order to be my best?” – a kind of self-driven style well-suited to dedicated leaders who will carry business into the future.

To practice personal leadership, you apply the principles of leadership that make businesses a success…to yourself. So what are these principles, broken down into the critical components and made more digestable for leaders in the digital era who face daily information overload?

Here are five practices for leading from within, from my book The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership:

 

Get clarity. What do you want? Getting clarity means being able to connect clearly and instantly to your long- and short-term ideas about success. In business, this practice often equates to setting a company vision. While a vision is a powerful thing, it’s not quite what you need as a leader. You may have a personal vision for yourself, but in addition, you need the skill of getting clarity on that vision again and again over time. Your vision will change as you change. Getting clarity ensures you don’t make changes in a direction you don’t want to go.

 

Find focus. Pay attention to where you’re putting your focus and energy. When you find focus, you fix your attention on top priorities even when the world around you is pulling you away. In business, focus shows up in the form of a strategic plan. The strategic plan makes it possible for everyone in an organization to see in a single document the vision, mission, goals, strategies and so on of an organization so they can all can stay on the same page. As a leader, you also need a one-pager to remind you of your priorities – maybe not down an exhaustive list of tactics, but at least the short list of areas that matter most to you. Having such focus is crucial especially in challenging times.

 

Take effective action. Have you ever spent a whole day busy at work, only to end it wondering if you actually got anything done? You can stop spinning your wheels and start driving with direction, quickly, easily, and with time to spare. Action items are the language of productivity in organizations, but as a leader you need more than a task list. You need to practice the mindsets and approaches to decision-making that help you take only the most effective actions and leave the rest behind. In his research for the book Good to Great, Jim Collins found this kind of results-oriented commitment to action to be one of the hallmarks of leadership in successful organizations. Having witnessed the “the quiet, dogged nature” of effective leaders, he concludes, “Disciplined action without disciplined thought is a recipe for disaster.”

 

Tap into your brilliance. Simply put, find out what’s unique about you, both positive and negative, and use your uniqueness to your advantage. In an effort to grow human capital, organizational leaders are constantly trying to attract and retain talent. When you tap into your brilliance, you make the most of the talents you already have. This practice captures the spirit of what author and former Gallup researcher Marcus Buckingham (Now, Discover Your Strengths and Go, Put Your Strengths to Work) calls “a strengths approach” to leadership. The philosophy is that we are at our best when we are aligned with our strengths.

Based on Gallup’s 40 year study of human strengths as described in Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder 2.0, “People who have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.

 

Feel fulfillment. In order to be your most effective as a leader, you get to discover what drives you – your values, meaning and purpose – so that you feel fulfilled. “Fulfillment” may not sound like a critical business result, but it is an essential requirement for great leaders.

Stephen Covey writes, “Deep within each one of us there is an inner longing to live a life of greatness and contribution – to really matter, to really make a difference.” Bolman and Deal, authors of Leading with Soul, agree: “Each of us has a special contribution to make if we can shoulder the personal and spiritual work needed to discover and take responsibility for our own gifts.

 

 

You can find the remaining best practices and more tips in The Inner Edge.

I also invite you to join Howard Morgan and myself on Wednesday, June 25 at 4 p.m. EDT at the WBECS 2014 as we discuss what is critical to understand when you are coaching someone who is a different gender than you. You can find more information here. Feel free to Tweet me at @JoelleKJay!

 

 

 You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.

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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.

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A 360-Degree View of You

When was the last time you looked in the mirror? What were you hoping to see? Did the mirror show you how you’re showing up as a leader? As a mother or father? As a role model?

The mirror is a good metaphor for what we need as leaders to understand how we’re showing up, and what might need to change for us to be the people on the outside that we so want to be on the inside.

Think about this. When it comes to your appearance, you can get a sense of yourself with a small hand mirror. But you’ll see more with a full-length mirror, and even more with a three-sided department store mirror. Even then, there are still some things a mirror can’t tell you: the overall impression you make when you walk into a room, the way your presence makes people feel, and how you look when you walk around. For these, you need other sources of input.

Just so with the way you show up as a leader. You can get some information on your own, just through reflection and self-assessment. But the more strategies you use to find out about yourself, the more complete your view will be. A variety of strategies will help you flesh out your view.

You can reveal some things about yourself by asking open-ended questions.

  1. Where are you especially talented?
  2. What do you love to do?
  3. What do you do without even thinking?
  4. What do people count on you for?
  5. In your social life, what role do you play?
  6. At work, what are you recognized for?
  7. Given the freedom to do things your way, how do you do them?

To find out more about the rest of you, ask:

  1. What activities would you gladly never have to do again?
  2. What do you wish you could pass on to someone else?
  3. When do you feel dragged down?
  4. What do you dread?
  5. When do you procrastinate?

As a coach, I deeply respect the insight leaders have into their own answers, and the knowledge you discover from these questions is invaluable. But it’s not enough.
To really get a sense of what you’re like, you also need some outside opinions. Here are some ideas.

Ask your friends, family and coworkers what they notice about you. How would they describe you? Get the positive and negative take. You’ll learn more about how you strike other people and discover more about what makes you brilliant.

Take profiles, assessments, and research-based quizzes to reveal your attributes. Each assessment will yield different information.

More customized and personal than most assessments, a 360-degree profile is a survey you conduct to get feedback on your effectiveness from the people “all around you” (hence the name). Traditionally, the survey is developed by a third party – say, a coach, consultant or research group – then distributed to a group of people who know you well enough to give you input.

How to get great feedback you can use to improve your effectiveness is the topic of just one of the information-rich chapters 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 take the steps to get good quality feedback, you’ll make the positive changes you need to make in order to like the leader you see in the mirror.

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Get Off Crack

Are you an addict? Let’s find out. Check the statements below – which apply to you?

  • I answer my phone in the middle of a conversation.
  • I can be reached by phone, text or email 24/7.
  • I’ve been known to check my PDA in movies, at the dinner table, or in the middle of the night.
  • I attend meetings at two levels – one above the table where the action is, and one under the table with my PDA.
  • If I can’t find my PDA I start to shiver, sweat and shake.

There’s a reason so many of my clients call their BlackBerry their CrackBerry. It’s addictive. And unless you want it to take over life, you’ve got to take some control.

Because it’s not just about turning off the machine. It’s about turning off the distraction. Paul Melchiorre, the vice president of global strategy at Ariba, puts it bluntly.

Even if you were good at managing your time before PDAs came along, now you need to adjust to this CrackBerry world. You have to know when to turn it off – not turning the BlackBerry off but being able to turn off the work mindset.

Time management now isn’t about having slots of time for home and slots of time for work. It’s all in the mix. What most people have done is learn how to shift back and forth from what’s happening in the present to what’s happening on their PDA, much the way my husband is right now flipping the channels back and forth between ESPN and the news.

But if you want to be effective as a leader, you need to stop flipping back and forth. You need to focus.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, Barack Obama’s own attorney or the highest paid entrepreneur ever to cash a check – your family wants you there at dinner. Your team wants you in the meeting with them now. You deserve to work an uninterrupted hour.

Try this trick every time your PDA rings. Imagine the person trying to reach you is actually physically present. Feel the sense of intrusion when they barge through the door mid-sentence in the middle of meeting, or tap on your shoulder incessantly as you’re trying to work.

Do you have the power to turn away from the spectre of efficiency and take back your life?

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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Father Tom

A friend of mine once told me a tale relayed to her by her pastor, Father Tom. Father Tom was given a jar of glass stones. The number of stones equaled the number of weeks, based on his age and demographic, that Father Tom could be expected to live. Every week he took one stone out of the jar. As he held the stone in his hand, he reflected on what it meant: one less week to live. Had he made that one week count?

Learning to make every moment count is a theme of 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.

The way you spend your time is the way you spend your life. Enjoy it; make it count.

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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.