Joelle K. Jay

reflection

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10 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask Themselves

Have you been running a million miles an hour, trying to keep up with the busyness of the season? Many entrepreneurs, especially this time of year, feel like they are so busy they’re starting to lose control. Losing control–over your schedule, your priorities, your ability to manage all of the details–isn’t just stressful, it’s a big red flag. Recognize the symptom of overwhelm as a cue to STOP and take control. In just 15 minutes, you can move from feeling overrun by your schedule to being back in control. You can empower yourself to be in charge again with a few minutes of reflection.

Empowered reflection is an ongoing, even routine process of paying attention to your progress–especially as a leader and entrepreneur.

Basically, it means taking a time out to think about your vision and ask yourself, “How’s it going?” You step out of the busy-ness of life to ask yourself a series of reflective questions about your life and leadership. If you do this regularly, say once a month or even a few times a year, you will keep your finger on the pulse of your development as a leader and your progress toward your goals.

By practicing empowered reflection you make it a habit to assess your progress. To get the most out of your empowered reflection, try bringing the following questions to your next meeting, or schedule a 15-minute block for yourself to write them out:

  1. What’s working?
  2. What’s not working?
  3. What would you like to change?
  4. What accomplishments have you achieved?
  5. What lessons have you learned?
  6. Are the goals still the right goals?
  7. What do you still need to know or learn?
  8. How might you be sabotaging your own success?
  9. What do you need to start doing, keep doing, and stop doing?
  10. What’s next?

Every time you go through this process, you are putting a stake in the ground for what you want. You are declaring, “My vision is important to me, and I’m willing to continue thinking about it and reaching for it until I achieve it.” Practicing this form of reflection on a regular basis is a technique for accountability and focus.

Empowered reflection isn’t hard. It doesn’t take long, and it doesn’t cost a dime. You can practice empowered reflection while driving, jogging, walking through the park, meditating, lying down, or even sitting in the bath. You can almost think of this practice as “visiting your vision” to see how you’re doing. That way it never gets forgotten.

Whenever you’re feeling detached from your long term vision, whenever you could use a boost to get back into action, or whenever you want to step back to get an overall perspective on your progress, take a few minutes to run through the ten questions above. Doing so will resurface the motivation you need to make your vision a reality.

Related: 3 Strategies to Following your Intuition Toward Success

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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The Mirage of Success and the 3 Stages of Feeling Fulfillment

The following article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

 

You’re successful. You’ve read tons of books, read a ton of “best practice tips” articles online. You’ve scoured tradeshows and networking events. And all that time has finally paid off–your business is thriving, your clients are happy, and the future is bright.

But do you feel fulfilled?

The sideffect of success isn’t always happiness. Sometimes it’s anxiety, existential apathy, or even a sense of isolation.

I worked with a corporate vice president in the banking industry, and, on paper, she had it all: the salary, stock options, and security. Yet she felt vaguely dissatisfied, even bored, wondering if something better was out there. This is a fairly common occurrence for successful entrepreneurs and leaders.

Here are the three stages of finding fulfillment–the next time you feel deflated or discontent, despite the green numbers on the spreadsheet, do the following:

 

Stage 1: Mining for values. Mine your experience to find values; values are the cornerstone of fulfillment. Living in alignment with your values is crucial for harmony and fulfillment. Values include principles, standards, and qualities. They don’t include material goods or people.

Revisit good memories, dream up ideal scenarios, or recreate the imagery you saw when you envisioned a you-and-improved future. Go back to a time that was “just right.” Take notes, explore what it was about that time and those experience that make it a peak experience. Write all the elements, and reexamine the bigger picture.

 

Stage two: Defining your values. After you have your list of potential values, define them. Choose your top 5-10 values and describe what each one means–the significance they have for you, and how it looks and sounds in your life. Defining your values moves them from platitudes to personal priorities.

Write a sentence or two about each top priority means to you. Defining your values gives them specificity and clarity.

 

Stage three: Refining your values. After you’ve defined your values, refine them with a process of prioritization. It’s revealing to understand which “top” values truly matter the most.

Imagine you are starting over in a brand-new work environment. Looking at your draft list of values, as yourself: If you could only be certain of having one value honored, which one would it be? Test it. If you had to live a life where you could count only on this one value, could you survive? Would you want to? And if you could have two values? Three? Continue ranking your values in this manner until you’re satisfied you have them in priority order.

 

Ultimately, once you’ve completed these three stages you have collected the raw materials of a golden life. It’s up to you to build a life with them. By looking at the role your values play in helping you achieve fulfillment, you are already beginning to live your values, as coaches say. In living your goals, you’re connecting with yourself, truly allowing yourself to feel fulfilled, and opening yourself up for more success to come.

 

Related: Breaking Down Your Roadblocks: The 4 People You Need To Help

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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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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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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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Let It Be Easy!

Letting it be easy is the first strategy for seeing possibility. My friend and mentor, Dr. Heidi McKenna, once taught me this:

If things are going your way, go that way.
If things aren’t going your way, don’t go that way.

To put this suggestion into effect, you just have to notice what’s working and do more of it. Notice what’s not working and do less of it. Easy. This strategy is especially helpful for making difficult decisions or finding your way through confusion.

Letting it be easy is an approach you can use to see new possibilities. You are able to work smart and let the current of your life carry you in the direction it wants to go. You can put down some of the weight of success by noticing which direction seems easy and right.

Try these questions to help you get in the mindset of letting it be easy.

•    What’s going your way?

•    What’s not going your way?

•    What do your answers suggest about what to do next? How can you let it be easy?

Take a step back every once in awhile. Notice where you’re struggling. Notice where it’s easy. Even if just for a while, try going the easy way. It may be the path of success. The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu put it simply: Easy is right.

Many more ways to let success be easy are available in The Inner Edge: The Extension. This eBook provides 3 New Secrets to succeeding while “letting it be easy” that aren’t available anywhere else! Order your copy of The Extension today: visit www.TheInnerEdge.com.

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Opening Pandora’s Box

I had an interesting conversation with David Rodriguez, Executive Vice President of Global Human Resources at Marriott International, recently. He made me think.

All the time I spend executive coaching, what I’m really doing is helping people think. I am asking them provocative questions. Expanding their thinking. Challenging them. It’s also my role to support them when the thinking is hard, sometimes push them off the cliff of their limitations and then cushion their fall. The result is growth, and the result of growth is peak performance and an improved bottom line.

I thought that was a good thing.

But David showed me another perspective. He reminded me how hard it is to reflect. How unready sometimes leaders are to learn. He said,

Most people I find shy away from being introspective. Even if they have the capability they shy away from actually practicing introspection.

Knowing David to be a brilliant leader in the arena of leadership development, I was a little surprised. I thought leaders loved this stuff! Here’s what he said:

The times we’re living in today are tough. Everyone is under a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of uncertainty. A lot of emotional energy is devoted to coping with things outside our control. We can’t control the economy. We feel like victims. Everyone is trying desperately to stay calm and focused in the face of external pressures. This is supposition, but I think the average person does not look to add to the pressures they face. While introspection is great as a catalyst for growth and fundamental to growth, in essence what it really is is going to a zone of discomfort. It’s finding out things about yourself that may not make you feel in the moment good and in control. Especially in these times when people have such pressures, [reflection] could be a Pandora’s box.

And I suppose he’s right. When you open the lid to your potential, who knows what demons lurk inside, just waiting to jump out and grab you? Do you really have the energy to rally now, of all times, to fight the status quo? Can’t you just suffer through the challenges in peace?

Of course you can. Many do. I’ll admit that since David and I talked, I have met a few people who seem truly bedraggled by the impact of a negative economy. It would be cruel to unleash on them Pandora’s box.

Or would it? What I want you to remember it that practicing personal leadership is not just about facing your fears. It’s about finding your strength.

In Pandora’s box you may find old habits, destructive patterns, or hidden fears.

But you will also find a clear, inspiring vision of who you want to be.

You’ll find new focus on what you want to achieve.

You’ll find new strategies and tools for progress.

You’ll find fulfillment.

New ways of spending your time.

A stronger, smarter, more motivating team.

A whole new universe of learning and possibility.

You’re going to find yourself.

The Fifth Practice of Personal Leadership is Feel Fulfillment. I’ll admit that perhaps the process of getting there may present challenging questions, but those questions are the doorway to a satisfying life.

When you sit on the lid of Pandora’s box, you lock your real self inside. Go ahead. Open up.

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.