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Feed the Soul with Small Surprises: Sunrise on Corey Hill

I woke earlier than I wanted, and rolled over hoping for another few hours of sleep. It wasn’t going to happen, and I began to think about a thorny project that needed something new for forward movement. I got out of bed feeling tired, stuck, and annoyed.

I went to sleep the night before thinking about the issue, and asked my unconscious to work on fresh insights while I slept. That often works. Not today – and recognition of it was probably what woke me so completely in the early morning dark. I headed downstairs – and with an attitude – to feed the dog.

Instead, at the base of the stairs I impulsively grabbed boots, a coat long enough to cover my pajamas, and car keys. I leashed up the now-confused and still-sleepy old dog and headed to Corey Hill – the highest spot in the neighborhood – to watch the sun rise.

I expected solitude and a beautiful place to feel sorry for my tired and not-currently creative self. And then the surprises began.

I arrived at the small, hillside park in the urban core to find more than fifty runners in brightly-colored gear, depositing backpacks on the summit (probably containing dress clothes for subsequent jogs to work or school) and warmly greeting each other on a frigid winter morning. A few brought dogs and were letting them socialize in the off-leash park at the base of the hill. People were talking, laughing, digging out warmer hats or gloves for themselves or others, and stretching together. All-in-all it was a marvelous pre-dawn party.

As the sky turned a pinkish grey, the runners self-organized and small groups began to run together down the east side of the hill into the intensifying sunrise.

I walked to the center of the park and enjoyed the runners taking off into the emerging morning colors, the crescent moon still bright in the clear dawn sky, the gorgeous sun rising behind the tall Boston buildings in the distance, and the widening glow of pink that grew out of the sun sphere and surprisingly spread out and across the entire horizon surrounding me as if in a 360 degree hot pink embrace.

It was a big, spectacular sunrise. And it was made even more beautiful by happenings on the ground and reminders that we are never alone even in our darkest hours.

The world may seem cold, but it is always filled with warm communities of shared interest, the energy of accomplishment, new hills to navigate, the vitality of youth – many were runners in their 20’s and 30’s, love and friendship, and the ability of the human spirit to conquer the cold and dark with a smile, a buddy, and a stride forward. We just have to find what we need – and if we let ourselves, we may even find it by happenstance.

I found unexpected beauty on Corey Hill – but I was cold. I forgot gloves. So, I drove slowly down the hill, as the runners were heading back up, and stopped at a coffee shop. Alone in the shop with the barista, we talked. He told me about walking to work in the dark and how bright the stars and moon were – the clear skies probably why it was so darn cold. He had just moved into the neighborhood, as have I, from my former neighborhood – and we spoke about that. I told him about Corey Park, and he responded: “Oh, I’m stuck here in the mornings. Tell me all about the sunrise there.” And over my cappuccino with cinnamon and ricotta cheese cake, I passed along descriptions of the sunrise, the runners and dogs, and small surprises – and we were both fueled in new ways to better embrace our days.

Leadership is demanding business, and successful leaders have strategies to sustain vitality and resolve. They feed body and soul.

In a book that I co-authored[i], we propose strategies to nourish and strengthen leaders. One set of recommendations is to give deliberate attention to five key areas – we call them the 5 B’s:

1. Managing boundaries between self and others, between your life and your work

2. Attending to your body in ways that maintain basic good health

3. Bringing balance among work, friends and family, and leisure

4. Finding activities that feed the soul, like the beauty and recuperative power of the arts and nature

5. Increasing the odds that you’ll bounce back from stress and challenge through resilience training.

How can you bring more of the 5 B’s into your life? What greatness could you accomplish with a little extra clarity, strength, vigor, and bounce?

[i] Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2011). Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, Chapters 8-13.

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Leading in a Global World Requires Global Eyes and Heart: Let Theater Be Your Guide

There’s nothing like live theater for learning about ourselves and life’s complexities.

It lets us walk in another’s shoes and immerse ourselves in new ways of thinking and being!  We listen, observe, and witness – and experience one of the few times when we significantly engage with others who speak directly to us that we do not talk or set our minds to work preparing responses to what they say before they even finish speaking. Theater slows life down and encourages us to study our reactions to it.

Quite simply, theater traffics in human understanding – and understanding one’s internal and external worlds is at the heart of leadership effectiveness. 

The major challenges in leading – understanding and working with those who are different from us, seeing situations through another’s eyes or different lenses, forging shared interests and common goals, motivating, influencing while remaining open to new learning, understanding the roots of competing interests and conflicts, finding lasting solutions to complex problems – echo life’s larger challenges.

Different cultures, ethnicities, upbringings, experiences, and social traditions can separate us. But broadening our perspectives and minds takes us to rich, new heights and toward common ground despite our differences. Theater lays out these grand dilemmas in accessible form and invites us to watch, reflect, and learn from them. I’ve been reminded of this by a recent event.

clip_image002I saw “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True” – Ifeoma Fafunwa’s beautiful, honest, high-energy production about the complex intersections among gender, culture, abuse, and inequity in Nigeria; and had opportunity to engage with the playwright post-performance. What powerful learning for today’s fast-paced, global world!

The show has been a phenomenon in Nigeria, playing to sold-out crowds in theaters, as well as standing-room-only, pop-up performances in markets, city squares, and other public places. It stars ten famous Nigerian stage and screen actresses, and is having its first full run in the U.S. at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

No question, the production is artistically magical, the cast and musicians superb, and the playwright a courageous and visionary leader in bringing cultural secrets to the light of day. This is an experience you won’t want to miss!

clip_image004Given the show’s subject matter and the added wallop of  “Nollywood” stars as messengers – think about the role of Hollywood women in the U.S. #MeToo and #TimesUp movements – it is a major intervention for social justice and women’s empowerment in Nigeria and beyond. 

The subject of women’s abuse and inequity is raw and rings brutally true in the production. The script is based on interviews with women in Nigeria across age, socio-economic class, place, and social circumstances and is a strategic series of song and dance-infused vignettes in the spirit of Anna Deavere Smith’s ethnographically-based work. The production (especially act 1) takes the audience, in the words of WGBH’s Jared Bowen, “right into the heart of abuse." There is pain for sure. But there is also great hope in bearing witness to the enduring spirit, fearlessness, defiance, and authenticity of women claiming voice, power, and personal agency: let change begin with me – a reminder to everyday leaders of their job to make the world a better place in whatever ways they can!

Leading in a global world requires global eyes and heart: the ability to understand and accept diverse cultures, see differences as the springboard to innovation, and work with grace and sensitivities when others hold values and beliefs far different from our own.

In today’s world, management educators and authors do leaders-in-training a disservice when they forget that or convey the illusion of simplicity or control with models and theories that portray work and life as linear, rational, neat, and tidy. Human nature is complicated, and social processes like leadership and management are steeped in ambiguity, confusion, competing values, and choice. Good theater acknowledges that and plays out human nature in its messy fullness. Let our understandings of leadership embrace the same.

Internal struggles, confusion, ambiguity, and doubts of the soul are all par for the course – and recognizing that enables us to summon the courage and persistence to stay the course. Real leadership looks more like the gritty and human process that it is – and less glamorous and heroic – when seen through the difficult choices and challenges of compelling characters, like the women in “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True”.

Life is not always fair nor power and resources equally distributed, and there is much work – globally and locally, personally and organizationally – to do. That’s why we need leaders fully prepared for the road ahead and able to embrace an increasingly diverse world without fear of loss!

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Springsteen on leadership: We were all born to run

I’m a Jersey girl by birth who loves the music and the poetry in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen.

“Long Walk Home” is a soul’s call to embrace roots and hope – integrate one’s past into a mindful present for a bright future. “Dancing in the Dark,” disco-like in its magic, screams agency and activism: “you can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.” And if you can listen to “Secret Garden” – and the late Clarence Clemons’s sax solo – without feeling the human need for connection, well … Even before making it into the “Jerry Maguire” soundtrack, that song had me at hello.  [Hyperlinks for your listening pleasure!]

Recently, clip_image003I’ve come to appreciate Springsteen’s lessons for leadership, discovered while seeing him up-close and personal in the New York Times-acclaimed “Springsteen on Broadway.” I subsequently read his autobiography, “Born to Run,” to learn more.

Springsteen is smart, articulate, and self-reflective in the best sense; and he offers rare insights into creativity, career success, and high-impact leadership in a volatile and fickle industry. His wisdom speaks powerful truths to all who want to lead and succeed in today’s crazy, competitive world.

The Boss has much to teach!  Let me focus here on two of his “clean aces” – two ways of thinking and being that can elevate your leadership when brought more deliberately into your life and work: authenticity and persistence fueled by hard work and proactive learning.

Authenticity:  Authentic leaders know who they are – their strengths, limitations, and values – and are not afraid to show it. They understand their emotions and motivations, and draw on both to communicate with integrity. Bolman and Deal got it right: the heart of leadership lies in the heart of the leader. [1]

Springsteen is a clear product of his working class New Jersey roots, Catholic upbringing, and dysfunctional family. Tempted to run from early life pain, he instead dove deep and learned things vital and universal about himself and human nature – both of which became cornerstones of his music and success. clip_image001

“Music that emotionally described a life I recognized, my life, the life of my family and neighbors. Here was where I wanted to make my stand musically and search for my own questions and answers”, says Springsteen. “I didn’t want out. I wanted in. I didn’t want to erase, escape, forget, or reject. I wanted to understand. What were the social forces that held my parents’ lives in check? Why was it so hard? The piece of me that lived in the working-class neighborhoods of my hometown was an essential and permanent part of who I was. No one you have been and no place you have gone ever leaves you” [p. 264].[2]

Springsteen believed audiences would resonate with music that spoke truth – that reminded them of “something they know” and could “feel it deep in their gut” [p. 236]. He would use his authentic self as the conduit to deep connection with others – and career success.

“I wanted my music grounded in my life, in the life of my family, and in the blood and lives of the people I’ve known,” he stated. “I’ve learned you’ve got to pull up the things that mean something to you in order for them to mean anything to your audience” [p. 267].

For that kind of deep connection to happen night after night, Springsteen needed talented others who could – and would – consistently bring the same authenticity and soul.

“There is a love and respect at the center of everything we do together,” he asserted. “It’s not just business, it’s personal. When you came to work with me, I had to be assured you’d bring your heart. Heart sealed the deal” [p. 217].

He became The Boss – a name he does not cherish – by demanding soul, not technique or flash. Everyone who worked with him needed to be clear about his mission, values, decision making rules, and standards of excellence. He developed and has held firm over his career to what he calls a guiding philosophy – an intentional code of conduct – that weds the personal and the professional. Being great for Springsteen is all about integrity, love, service, and an honest relationship with his followers.

“We [Springsteen and his E Street Band] are more than an idea, an aesthetic. We are a philosophy, a collective, with a professional code of honor. It is based on the principle that we bring our best, everything we have, on this night, to remind you of everything you have, your best. That it’s a privilege to exchange smiles, soul, and heart directly with the people in front of you … to apply your trade humbly as a piece of a long, spirited chain you’re thankful to be a small link in” [p. 217].

Springsteen also understood the competitive industry advantage of authenticity and how it would keep his brand fresh and evolving.

“I’d seen other great musicians lose their way and watch their music and art become anemic, rootless, displaced when they seemed to lose touch with who they were. My music would be a music of identity, a search for meaning and the future” [p. 265].

What’s your authenticity quotient? How can you bring more of your true self into your leadership? Where would you start? What are the benefits for you? For your organization?

Persistence fueled by hard work and proactive learning:  Springsteen made a vow to improve his craft every day from the moment he picked up his first, cheap, childhood guitar; and his self-improvement work continues, driven by an unwavering commitment to hard work and continuous learning.

“I was interested in doing my job better and being great. Not good … great. Whatever that took, I was in,” said Springsteen. “If you have the talent, then will, ambition and the determination to expose yourself to new thoughts, counterargument, new influence, will strengthen and fortify your work” [p. 215].

His autobiography charts a complex and continuous path of learning, musical directions, investments, dead-ends, and discoveries. Through it all, Springsteen held no illusions. Success required being “very aggressive, very proactive about what you want” [p. 231], having resolute focus on the ultimate prize, and working hard to augment creativity and “deepen truth” [p. 214].

“I was not a natural genius,” Springsteen said he realized early in his career. “I would have to use every ounce of what was in me – my cunning, my musical skills, my showmanship, my intellect, my heart, my willingness – night after night, to push myself harder, to work with more intensity than the next guy just to survive untended in the world I lived in” [p. 138].

His persistence was fueled by a “passion” for high-impact and work ethic of “no wasted days or nights” [p. 115] – every failure has the potential for deep learning. Springsteen knew he had to “stay hungry” and “divest” of all unnecessary distractions to find “my adult voice” [p. 267]. He also made necessary sacrifices. Springsteen, for example, avoided alcohol and drugs when both were normative and readily available in the music scene – and he cut precious ties with those without that discipline. Nothing was going to come between him and making great music for as long as he wanted.

“The rock death cult is well loved and chronicled in literature and music,” he said. “The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit. Now, if you’re not one of the handfuls of musical revolutionaries – and I was not – you naturally set your sight on something different. In a transient field, I was suited for the long haul. I had years of study behind me, I was physically built to endure, and by disposition was not an edge dweller. I was interested in what I might accomplish over a lifetime of music making” [p.214].

What do you hope to accomplish over a lifetime of opportunities? What’s your passion? What must you learn and do to lead to the full potential of your talents?

[1] L. G. Bolman and T. E. Deal (2011). Leading with Soul. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[2] Page numbers appearing in brackets are from B. Springsteen (2016). Born to Run. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Leading with persistence, focus, and patience: Let joyful attention training fuel the way

Leaders need persistence, focus, and patience in their work.

Leadership is an interpersonal sport, and people are complex and unpredictable. Leading well requires sustained engagement, open exchange, mutual learning, and influence. It involves loss and change, and change takes time. High-impact leadership cannot be forced: you don’t want to cross the line into bullying or assume you can go it alone. Both have their costs. You want to stay firmly grounded yet open to new possibilities – relaxed yet vigilant with an eye on continued progress toward the prize.

How can you develop habits of the mind that underpin the kind of calm, focused, non-judgmental persistence required? Sound complicated? It really isn’t.

You have undoubtedly experienced moments of “flow”[i] – when you feel “in the zone” and so deeply engaged in an activity that the world around you disappears. Time seems to fly. Professional musicians aim for this in their performances;[ii] and NBA coaching great, Phil Jackson, designed his entire coaching strategy around helping his players get there[iii]. But you don’t need to be a professional athlete or musician to intentionally train and direct your mind to be more focused yet relaxed. Your attention is like a muscle. Work it with regular mental exercises to make it stronger. A bit of neuroscience explains why and how[iv].

The mind is never at rest. The idling brain is as active when you are “vegging out” as when doing a crossword puzzle! Unless you direct it, your brain will do what comes naturally: neurons will fire spontaneously with thoughts about you – your problems, woes, and what ifs of life, spinning internal dialogues and stories that randomly weave together your past, present, and future. The idling mind is a wandering mind, easily distracted by things other than what we are doing or wanting to think about[v]. Three things about this are important for our discussion here.

One, it is as important in learning to better focus your attention that you know how to turn off parts of your brain as it is to turn on others.

Two, you can turn off dysfunctional or energy-wasting ruminations by choosing to engage in an externally-oriented, goal-directed, chosen task.

Three, what helps you refocus your attention in the short term retrains your brain over time. Neurons that fire together stay together, hardwiring your brain.[vi]

You want habits of the mind that “right-wire” your brain. That’s the benefit – and the joy – in attention training.

Dr. Amit Sood of the Mayo Clinic offers strategies for “right-wiring” your brain, and suggests practicing simple attention-focusing techniques four to eight time a day during your training period. You may have to undo life-long cognitive tendencies, and “just as a river needs time to carve a canyon, resilient new brain pathways depend on repetitive and deeply felt experiences.”[vii]

His suggested activities ask you to notice and enjoy your world more deeply, connect your thoughts and senses, look for novelty in the everyday, and suspend judgment. Important for our purpose, each can be used to disrupt unhelpful or distracting ruminations – and remind your idling brain that you are in charge! Many take but a few minutes to practice, and they bring the added benefit of increased pleasure and joy. Joy refuels the soul for life’s uphill climbs!

Try this[viii]:  Let me suggest a few personal favorites from Dr. Sood to get you started. Commit yourself to a few weeks of brain retraining, and let me know how things are going. Email me at theprof@theleadershipprofessor.com

Find novelty in an ongoing relationship: greet another as if meeting after a long time; devote time to sharing something new or newly rediscovered for each of you

Find the extraordinary in the ordinary: pay attention to some detail around you in a new way – the blue of the sky, different shades of green in the grass, the pattern in the rug you have walked mindlessly on so many times. Let each new discovery of beauty or novelty wash over you!

Start and end your day with gratitude: use it to turn off the stress in waking up to your usual to do and dread lists or in hitting the sack focused on everything on the lists for tomorrow.

Notice nature: as the Buddhist adage goes: Spend 10 minutes each day quietly in nature. If you are very busy and overloaded, spend 20 minutes.

Eat, walk, or exercise mindfully: pay attention to time, place, pace, posture, and other sensory experiences in everyday acts. And mindful eating is a good way to control weight and food choices!

Try small random acts of kindness: kind attention is externally-focused attention, and kindness toward others will boost your mood.

Find something in another to be impressed by: The Hindi word namaste means the divine in me salutes the divine in you. See the divine in those around you. Namaste!

[i] Mihaly Csikszentmyhalyi (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

[ii] John Whiting (2008). YoYo Ma: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

[iii] Phil Jackson (2006). Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior. New York: Hyperion.

[iv] Amit Sood (2013). The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-free Living. Boston, MA: DaCapo Press, chapters 2, 5, 6, 7.

[v] Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (2010). “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” Science 2010: 330-932.

[vi] Donald Hebb, as quoted in Sood (2013), p.10. Hebb is the father of neuroscience, and American Psychologist named him one of the 20th century’s most eminent and influential theorists in the realm of brain function and behavior.

[vii] Amit Sood (2013), p. 66.

[viii] This post is adapted from material appearing in Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2016). Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. https://www.amazon.com/Engagement-Transforming-Difficult-Relationships-Work/dp/1119150833/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1517320130&sr=8-2

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Your Leadership Matters: Start by Building Resilience

The Leadership Professor announces her new blog, Your Leadership Matters.

She brings wisdom and strength from a journey rivaling that of Odysseus and celebrates new understandings garnered through her travels. Our current times require nothing less than high-impact leadership, and The Leadership Professor stands ready to serve as your guide so that you can rise successfully to the challenges ahead.

Leadership is all about making a difference on things that matter and the world a better place for us all. It comes in many forms and shapes – from creating and managing complex systems that do justice to employees, local communities, tasks at hand, and the environment to naming the injustice in an observed micro-aggression at the local supermarket against someone deemed different.

We all have opportunities to lead – whether we sit at the head or the foot of the table. The trick is to be ready when opportunity calls. So, where do we begin?

In my work, people regularly ask what it takes to lead well. The list is long, but at the top is resilience.

Resilience is the ability to adapt and strengthen in the face of challenge, uncertainty, failure, or trauma. It is a learned skill that builds with use. It includes steps like:

  • recognizing you always have a choice in interpreting and responding to events (even when you feel you don’t)
  • learning to keep things in perspective – for most situations, good enough is indeed good enough
  • looking for creative ways to make challenges work for you (and not add to your burdens)
  • practicing new behaviors and responses, and
  • reflecting on how well all this is working for you.

Think about a recent situation that was deeply challenging for you.  How well did you stay centered and focused? Agile and creatively flexible?  What made the situation so challenging for you?

How, for example, did you frame the event? Disaster? Opportunity? End of the world? Intriguing fun? Bump in the road? How did your framing fuel your energy and reactions?  Enable you to see and understand what was really happening for you and others? How quick were you to think of creative options to make the situation work (beyond blaming others, remaining perplexed, or expecting others to fix things – and getting mad when they didn’t)?  How easily did you let go of any angst or anger?

Do you see any similarities between your strategies in that situation and in others at work or at home? 

We can never control the demands of others – and as much as we’d like demanding others to make the world right or simpler for us, they often can’t or won’t.  But we can control how we understand and respond to their demands. And sometimes just remembering that is enough for us to take a step back and a deep breath, to recognize that we have control over how we interpret events despite our frustration, and to think creatively about how to turn a crummy situation into something good – or at least something manageable.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at U-Mass Medical Center, has a wonderful reminder about life: You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

That spirit, sense of personal agency, and confidence are at the heart of leadership effectiveness – and make for a happy professional (and personal) life.

It’s easier for some to approach life and work this way than for others – genes, early life experiences, brain wiring, past trauma, and educational experiences make a difference. The good news: wherever we start, we can all get better.  Being resilient lets us live more complex, global lives gracefully; and it’s less costly to body, soul, and relationships.

Resilience at its core involves learning to “wear life loosely”[i].  We’re more creative problem solvers when we do. How do we build the capacity to wear life loosely yet productively? As someone for whom resilience did not come naturally, I’ve studied and thought deeply about that. Five suggestions from my work:  

Start with what you know you can control or change – you. It is easy to hope that others will change. We know from research that’s a common, first response for us all. But you have the best control over the process when you focus on changing yourself, your response, your way of framing the situation. This is not to say that you should cocoon, pull back, withhold your preferences or observations, or refuse to engage challenging others or ineffective situations. It is more a question of how, when, and why you do that work – and a reminder that you stand a better chance of influencing others when you know what you want and when you are trying patiently and openly to make things work.

Embrace your control over your full range of choices and options.  It’s easy to feel stuck – as if there’s only one way out or only one way to understand a sticky situation. It’s always harder to think of options – so much of life rewards us for being on automatic pilot. Resilience comes from being a stronger, more deliberate, and broad thinker – no one-trick pony – and from having the confidence in knowing that you are.

How do you develop those capacities? Practice them. Be playful. Take a minute now and then to ask yourself questions like, So what else could I do now? What other options do I have? How else could I respond? What else is possible? Why else might others be acting as they do? Once you get into the hang of it, these kinds of questions become second nature. They also enable you to see a broader and richer world.

Learn to reframe. That means being able to stand back and look at a challenge from multiple angles and perspectives before jumping to the conclusion that you know what’s really happening (for you and others). This is especially important when you feel high stress, anger, anxiety, or other deep emotions.

If I tell myself I’m stuck, I am. If I say that I’m lost or overwhelmed, I will be. When I see an opportunity, it’s always there.

When driven blindly by feelings, we react. It may feel good to vent, but to what end? Professionals have confidence that they know how to respond. The difference between reacting and responding is huge. What are the stories that you tell yourself in the face of frustrating or over-whelming situations?  Try an alternative framing. You’ll see your mood lighten and options grow.  

Accept: not everything is equally important. This may sound trite, but think about how often you have gotten yourself into a major stew over the small stuff.  We do it all the time.

Despite what you may have been told by well-meaning grammar school teachers, not everything is worth doing well – and some things are not worth doing at all.

Sure there are consequences to your choices. Choose to not do something, and you haven’t done it. This is where knowing yourself comes in.

What’s really important to you? Where do you not want to miss anything or make a mistake? What are the issues or areas where you can cut yourself some slack? Be less perfect?  Punt without shirking your responsibility to self or others? 

That’s the essence of managing work-life balance and overload – and you hold the key to that.  As you climb in responsibilities, you will never be able to do everything – and you’ll never be able to do all that you do perfectly.  How can you learn to accept that in yourself?  How can you use the supports and resources you have to share the load? Build networks of trust? That’s not easy for people with high expectations and needs for control, yet it’s essential.      

Laugh.  A good sense of humor is mandatory for resilient leaders – and that means laughing at yourself, your mistakes, and your foibles. It’ll help keep things in perspective – and you’ll have a grand time.

Onward!

[i] B. Siegel (1993). How to Live Between Office Visits: A Guide to Life, Love and Health. New York: HarperCollins.

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Working with an Executive Search Firm, Step II: Creating a Compelling Career Narrative

Preparation is important for successfully working with a search firm. That includes a strong, updated vita that shows your experience, skills, main accomplishments, and demonstrated results across a range of positions.

Preparation also means helping someone who knows nothing about you to understand what that vita  means to (and about) you, your past institutions, and your potential new employer. You do that by preparing a clear and compelling career narrative about what you have done and how that illustrates key strengths and accomplishments. Use the arc of your story to make sure you introduce issues, establish context, and emphasize experiences of which you are proud. Having your story prepared also helps you answer, with poise, open ended questions like, “tell me about yourself.”

A good, clear storyline quickly conveys a full and accurate portrait of your accomplishments and potential. It is also more memorable than a list of jobs and positions. The search consultant will have studied your vita before you meet or talk via phone (or will have been updated by someone who has). It’s up to you to bring that vita to life: convey who you are, what makes you tick, and what you do best.

It’s tempting when working with a search firm to only discuss your strengths. Certainly you want to begin  there and demonstrate how past experiences have built the skills and strengths relevant to the job you seek. But don’t stop there – unless your flat side or things you dislike aren’t relevant to the work you are exploring (or you want to talk yourself into a job that may not be right for your experience, interests, or temperament).

Working successfully with a search consultant is not a simple selling contest. It’s developing a relationship of mutual trust that benefits your both. For that, you will want to find an opportunity to identify new areas that you are excited to master or discuss your confidence in tackling new areas of interest or responsibility.

Job searches are all about fit: finding the place that values and uses the skills, talents, and experiences that you bring. Search consultants seek to identify that “fit” as well: they succeed when they find individuals who can and will succeed in the job (or they will have to redo the search for their client at their own expense). 

Not all jobs and organizations are created equal: the work and work life that goes with a titled position in one institution can be very different from that at another. Jobs that look perfect on the surface may come with unusual expectations, complex histories, or organizational cultures that are incompatible with your values and preferences. A good relationship with a search firm can help you find that out – and give you to confidence to say no to offers that are less than perfect because a better one is just around the corner. 

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Working with an Executive Search Firm, Step I: Establishing a Relationship

If you are (or anticipate) looking for a leadership position, especially in higher ed, you need skills working with an executive search firm. Even if you’ve used one to recruit talent to your institution, it’s completely different being on the other side of the search. The next series of blogs will explore the issues.

First, everyone with good experience under their belt and with career aspirations should cultivate a relationship with a few of the major search firms in their field. How?

Get introduced to a senior partner through a colleague. A simple email introduction offers opportunity to begin a relationship, send a vita, and get into the firm’s database. Have a well-written vita that captures what you’ve done and its impact.

Or look on websites to see who those partners are and reach out with an email or call. If you’ve been around an industry for awhile, you may already know someone. Partner bios will tell their areas of focus.

If you have a geographic area of interest, find out who handles that region and start there. Suggest a coffee or a quick meeting, for example, when you’ll be in town for a conference or event. Plan ahead. By the nature of the business, search firm people spend their lives on planes, on the phone, or in meetings. 

You don’t need to be looking for a job to reach out. If you’re beginning to outgrow your current job or are unsure of how to get where you want to eventually be, say so. Search consultants know the questions to ask about what you’ve done and what you want. A conversation like this is clarifying for career planning.

And since search firm folks have great interpersonal skills, they are enjoyable people to be with and can become trusted colleagues. When offered a job, for example, I got objective advice from two colleagues at firms that were not conducting the search, by running the opportunity by each for a “hey, what do you know that I should know or consider?” I got information I needed to make the right decision.      

NOTE: Feel comfortable contacting search firms. You are doing them a favor, and they are predisposed to want to learn about you. Remember, an executive search firm is like a yenta. Both want to be ready, having identified as many possible partners as possible, to facilitate a good match for a specific opportunity when it comes along.

IMPORTANT: As in any relationship, there are people you hit it off with quickly and those you don’t. If the chemistry is good with a partner in your call, don’t push it. Ask if s/he has recommendations for someone else you should introduce yourself. Or wait a few months, look down the list, and try someone else.

Your fit and comfort with your contact partners are key. They have to like and trust you and vice versa. Your future rests in your ability to be honest about who you are, what you do well, and what you don’t.

Equally important, your future depends on their abilities to understand you as a person and a professional, remember you, and present your case (wrinkles and all) to organizations that can be right for you.

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General

Effective Thinking 101

If leading, first and foremost, requires clarity of thought about what’s going on and what we need to do about it, how do we make people better thinkers?  Slower in their natural inclinations toward snap judgments that may be wrong or incomplete? More aware of the evidence that underpins their conclusions? More open to soliciting essential information from others and flexible in responding to it? 

A colleague’s recent book, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird), gave me a great idea. Subject yourself to the “How Do I Know?” test.

Simply stop when asserting a position and ask yourself the question “how do I know that?” If you can, take a few minutes to jot down your answers to questions like, What evidence am I using? What’s the source of my opinion? How long have I held this belief? Look at what you’ve written. You may be surprised to find yourself on shakier ground than you expect.

Try the “How Do I Know?” test regularly and often – make it a fun game for a few weeks to develop a new habit of the mind. Try it in the quiet of your home. While out shopping. When listening to the evening news. Use the “How do I know?” question to stimulate interesting conversation with friends or to determine subjects you want to learn more about.

Becoming a more mindful and deeper thinker is a first step in developing capacities essential for leadership success.

Want to take the exercise one step further? Try it in the midst of a disagreement with another. Take a break in the action and ask yourself, “How do I know what I’m so strongly defending?”  Get riskier: ask and answer the question publically, and ask your partner in disagreement to talk about the same.

“It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you do know that ain’t so.” Will Rogers or Mark Twain or someone else (Burger and Starbird, p.38)

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General

What makes leading so difficult?

The hardest part of leadership is knowing what’s really going on. We can’t bring people together to solve a problem or advance a goal if we don’t have shared understanding of what’s happening and what to do about it.  

Humans have a strong need to believe that what they understand and see is exactly how the world is. That means we are often clueless about how much what looks like Truth to us is really personal interpretation of what’s going on. It’s as if we are predisposed by Mother Nature to not know how much we don’t know. Why?

Human limits: We can attend to only a limited amount of information and experiences available. And our values, education, experience, cognitive capacities, physical abilities, and developmental limitations influence what we see. We register some things, ignore others, and draw conclusions. All this occurs quickly and outside of awareness.

The result: what leaders see and think can seem more like Truth and the way the world really is than the individual creations and interpretations that they are. The tacit nature of all this can blind leaders to gaps and inaccuracies. It also leaves little incentive for them to question their interpretations or retrace any of their steps from data selection through decisions about appropriate action.

Human need for certainty: We’d never be able to act if we had to think all the time about what we are missing. The big problem is when people create explanations of what things mean and assume that others either see things the same way or, if they don’t, are wrong. Here is the basis for conflict and confusion. 

From thought to action: People’s personal interpretations are prescriptions for how they and others should respond. If we see our unit’s budget problem as over-spending, we’ll cut expenses. If we see inadequate allocations, we’ll lobby for more. If we sense embezzlement, we’ll call the cops. You see the ease and the potential complications in all this. We’re often off and running before we’re even sure where we should be heading.

“We carve out order by leaving the disorderly parts out,” concluded eminent psychologist William James. How do we remind ourselves that this is what we are doing?

Successful leaders bring habits of the mind that make them deliberate information gathers who work to understand a situation from multiple perspectives. They respect the need for action, but know that the right response is better than a quick wrong response. They build relationships that enable others to feel safe  disagreeing with them. They listen to what other’s tell them and work to confirm (or disconfirm) the accuracy of their perceptions. They test interpretations and experiment with solutions.  

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General

5 Strategies to Avoid Adaptation Burnout

I’ve been meeting this week with a group of academic library leaders. In the course of our discussions, someone mentioned the difficulties of living in a world of constant turmoil in which leaders are expected to engage in non-stop change and change management. 

The result – adaptation burnout: the psychological (and physical) exhaustion that comes from the continued challenging of what we know, do, and believe.  I knew he was right. We regularly talk about the resistance and human tendency to “hold on” that makes change difficult. Adaptation burnout, however, rarely makes it on the radar screen. It should. 

Humans are creatures of habit, and it’s the patterns in our daily lives that enable us to function with an economy of energy and effort. Disrupt that, and the investment required for even simple actions escalates. Keep upping the ante with more and more change, and no surprise: we’re not just tired, but stretched to our human limits to take on anything more, anything new. The resulting burnout manifests itself in disrupted relationships, health concerns, and loss of pleasure in work and play.

As leaders, it’s our duty to manage the rate and pace of change so as not to overload the system or the individuals who work in it. It is also important to support and protect ourselves.

It is tempting for leaders to try to ignore the personal costs of our work. We feel pressures to produce, and the demands of the situation often keep us attending more to others’ needs than our own. 

Conceptions of heroic leadership – commonly accepted myths of the solitary superhero whose brilliance and strength save the day – seduce us into stoic acceptance of the added pressures and responsibilities. But leaders, after all, are only human.  What can protect and support leaders in their demanding work?

In Chapter 12 of Reframing Academic Leadership, Lee Bolman and I suggest five strategies. How would you rank yourself on each?  

1. managing boundaries between self-other, personal-professional, self-work role, and leader-follower.

2. proactively attending to health and stress management

3. seeking life balance in meeting the diverse needs of mind, body, and soul 

4. finding respite and sanctuary for perspective and rejuvenation: the beauty and recuperative power of the arts make them obvious choices

5. enhancing resilience skills: recognizing that we grow stronger in the face of challenge enables us to bounce back more quickly in the face of setbacks.