Grateful to Others? Let Them Know!

In this challenging year, it may be hard to remember the last time it didn't feel like your plate was full. When we're so busy, it's easy to overlook even important things — like the people who are making a difference in our lives.

As we get close to Thanksgiving, take a moment to reflect on the times this year when you've been elevated by the support and kindness of others.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Maybe this makes you think about the friend or former colleague who always seems to know when you need a cheerful call or text message. Or the boss who still finds the time to listen even though you know her schedule has gotten busier. Or your family members who have kept a good attitude despite changes in your routines.

Just by thinking about the people you are grateful for, you'll feel less stress. And who couldn't use that right now? But don't stop there. Let these people know how they've made your life better and how much you appreciate them. Your expression of gratitude will lift their spirits. And, again, you'll benefit, too. Positive psychology researcher Martin Seligman found that when people shared letters of gratitude with someone they had never properly thanked for their kindness, they immediately became happier — and stayed happier for the next month!

In my own life, I want to thank my sister, brother, aunt and cousins who have really gone the extra mile for me this year. Who is on your personal gratitude list? And how will you let them know about the important difference they have made for you?

How to Move Forward Amid Uncertainty

It all adds up: Election stress, pandemic stress, economic stress. Not to mention the regular stresses of our busy lives.

But no matter where we are emotionally right now, and no matter what lies ahead, we're all working to keep moving forward on the things that are important to us.

Your instinct might be to just keep pushing yourself. But that's not sustainable. Instead, I want to encourage you to take time today to think about where you are and to plot your path forward.

It's easy sometimes to overlook the first part of that process: checking in with yourself. But self-awareness, especially during times of change, is a crucial part of being a leader.

How Are You Right Now?

That's why I want you to pause to consider how you are doing at this moment. Where would you place yourself on a scale of 1 to 10?

A “10” means you consistently feel strong, optimistic or resilient. You developed strategies that have been working well for you this year. A “1” means you may feel depleted, drained or are struggling from week to week. You're at your lowest point of 2020. If neither of those extremes applies to you and how you feel vacillates, you may fall somewhere in the middle.

Remember that this exercise is less about the numerical rating and more about being honest with yourself and noticing what’s going on for you.

Next, think about what has helped you navigate all the uncertainty of 2020 so far. What has kept you going and gotten you through the most difficult times? Here are a few possible answers to help spark your thinking:

• I've felt my best this year when I've protected my time for exercising even when my schedule is hectic.

• I've discovered that writing down my feelings really helps me de-stress.

• Talking with friends, colleagues or mentors who lift my energy has helped me deal with the hardest parts of 2020.

What Do You Really Need?

Finally, pick one of those helpful habits or activities and think about how you can bring it to the forefront. This is important no matter what your emotional state and stress levels are right now. If you're feeling good, understanding why this is so will help you keep building on your momentum. If you're not doing so great, the best way to start turning things around is going back to the tools and strategies that have worked for you before.

Either way, make sure the step you focus on is easy to implement. It should involve an action you can take immediately to give yourself more of what you need. You can even share what you are doing with someone close to you so that they can hold you accountable.

As always, I want to remind you that small steps lead to big results. That's never felt more true. And I'm here to support you as you take those steps. Here are a few more resources that can help:

• Why pausing makes you more productive

• How to use passion to overcome fear

• When you are tired of being strong

• The best leaders ask for help

• All self-paced tools from Newberry Executive Solutions

How to Stop Fixing and Start Coaching

As a high performer, you're good at solving problems. But do you ever feel too good at it?

I'm hearing from a lot of leaders lately that they're spending their days putting out fires, dealing with crises and answering questions for their team members. 

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

If that sounds a lot like your days, too, you may feel like you're stuck in this situation. Things are still busy and unpredictable. There's no end in sight for problems that need solving. But maximizing your impact as a leader does not mean always jumping in and coming to the rescue. Today I want to give you some alternate strategies that will benefit both you and your team.

The Downside of Solving

It's easy for leaders to get into the habit of being the fixer or the solver, especially in stressful times like these.

After all, you're a leader because you've proven that you can efficiently solve problems. When team members come to you with a quandary or crisis, you can probably identify a solution quickly. You really want to get this problem off your plate, and coaching your direct report through it seems a lot more complicated than dealing with it yourself. So, once again, you become the solver.

But while you are saving time and stress in the short term, you are setting yourself and your team members up for longer-term problems. When you regularly leap to solving instead of coaching or delegating for development, here's what can happen:

• You lose time for your most important work. As a leader, your priorities should include big-picture thinking and helping your team members develop. When you're neglecting these priorities to do the work your reports could be doing, you aren't adding all the value you can as a leader.  

• You get caught in an unproductive pattern. The more you solve for them, the more your team will ask you to solve. And the less time you will have for anything else.

• Your team members miss opportunities to grow. By over-relying on you, they're hampering their own career development.

• You sow discord on your team. If you're always solving problems for some team members instead of helping them develop, the rest of the team will notice — especially if their colleagues' underperformance creates more work for them. On the other hand, your direct reports who need development may not understand why others are your "go-tos" for important assignments.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself

So how can you balance the short-term concerns of getting things done quickly with the long-term concerns of strengthening your team, developing its members and maximizing your own leadership? Here are a few questions that can help you move from solving to coaching and developing.

• What is your role? Even if you complain about being "the solver," does your ego get a boost from playing this role? Becoming aware of this can help you get unstuck and start finding better ways to use your expertise.

• How do you want to show up? How do you want others to see you as a leader? If you’re always in the details problem-solving, you’re less likely to be viewed as someone with the capacity to move up and contribute more strategically.

• How capable is your team? If you feel nervous delegating to certain team members, is it because of their competence? If so, identify the need for additional training beyond coaching from you.

Making the Shift

With your answers to these questions in mind, what's one small shift you can make to go from short-term problem-solving to investing in your team’s longer-term development? For example, it might be as simple as pausing when someone comes to you with an issue and reminding yourself that this person has the ability to learn and that you can coach them.

As you do things differently, others might not know what to make of your changes in behavior. So remember to connect the dots for them by framing your actions, "I trust you and want to give you a chance to grow. I'm here to help, but I'm going to step back to let you own this project."

From time to time, you will find yourself in urgent situations where you need to jump in and take action. But you can still coach even in these cases. After the problem is resolved, meet with your team member to talk through what you did and prepare them to handle similar scenarios in the future.

As a leader, preparing your team members to lead is one of the most important things you can do. And it shows your own readiness for a bigger role. For more strategies like these, pick up a copy of  "Building a Strong Team" from my Leadership EDGE℠ Series.

Insights from America Ferrera

“Your identity is a superpower, not an obstacle.”

That was just one of my favorite quotes from the keynote conversation with actor, director and author America Ferrera at the Texas Women's Foundation's 35th Annual Luncheon.

TWF works for social and economic change for women, girls and families in Texas. I'm honored to support the organization's mission as a member of its board of directors. The theme of this virtual event was creating more inclusive communities across Texas. 

Ferrera delivered some powerful inspiration on the topic of inclusivity. You may know this Emmy and Golden Globe winner best from the shows "Ugly Betty" and "Superstore" or movies like "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." But Ferrera has also served as a producer and director on "Superstore" and other projects. She is the author of "American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures." As an activist, she was a founding member of Time's Up and has worked with the organization Voto Latino. She holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Southern California.

Being Whole and Authentic

During the TWF luncheon, Ferrera emphasized the importance of being your whole self. Many of us make decisions in the moment that may not fully reflect who we are. Perhaps we are compromising, concerned about being rejected or simply taking the path of least resistance. Over time, each of those small decisions can add up to a lot. What have you not explored in yourself or kept from others because of who you thought you had to be? What aspects of yourself have you had to strip away to fit in?

“What does success mean?" Ferrera said. "Does it mean just getting into the room, or does it mean who you can be once you’re in that room? My journey has taken me to: It only matters if I’m in those rooms if I can be my whole authentic self.”

In corporate America, we talk a lot about the business case for inclusion, but Ferrera brings a more personal perspective. She encouraged us to think of inclusivity as something that benefits each of us individually. When you empower someone else, you also empower yourself. When you help others be safer, you are safer as well. Investing in others means creating valuable opportunities for the world to benefit from their talents (talents that otherwise might have gone unexpressed). And to create the change we want to see, we need everyone's talents to come together.

To learn more about the work of the Texas Women's Foundation, please visit www.txwf.org. The organization's next event is Virtual Viewpoints: The 19th with journalist Emily Ramshaw on October 19.

One Thing Video Series: Get More Visibility for Your Accomplishments

Are you getting the recognition you deserve for all of the great work you are accomplishing? If not, my latest One Thing You Can Do video will teach you one of my top strategies for increasing your visibility.

5 Ways to Self-Promote While Working Remotely

Is remote work making you feel out of sight, out of mind with your boss and other key leaders?

A recent article in Harvard Business Review argues that while working from home creates benefits like flexibility, it also carries unique pitfalls for women that can hold us back from promotions and pay raises.

In my last article, I gave you some tactics for dealing with one of those pitfalls: increasing demands at work and at home. This week, let's tackle another key question of our new WFH reality: How do you build relationships, get recognized for your contributions and advance your career when you and your colleagues can’t just run into each other in the office? Here are five of my best practices.

1. Track Your Accomplishments

I have always recommended keeping track of your successes. But it's now more important than ever. With our days so busy, it's easy to overlook all the ways you're creating value. So make it a point to regularly jot down your accomplishments — even if some of them don’t seem like a big deal. Then write down the impact of each accomplishment to help you notice its relevance.  You’ll find that even those small successes can have a big impact. For example, just one productive meeting with an influential leader can set the stage for a strong working relationship.

When you track your accomplishments, you will have them top of mind – which will make it easier to communicate them to others. Trust me, it's also a great morale booster as you realize the difference you’re making!

2. Strategically Communicate Your Value

After you start logging your accomplishments, the next step is to tell others about them. Don’t assume that others will simply notice your hard work and recognize you for it. Remember, your boss has a lot on her plate, too. "Tastefully tooting your own horn" isn't bragging. It's helping your boss understand all the ways you add value so that she can more fully leverage them.

Without the impromptu interactions that happen in an office, you have to be even more intentional about communicating your accomplishments and their significance. That could mean being ready to share one of your team’s successes on your next Zoom call. As a bonus, it also recognizes your team members. Or you could simply email your boss regular updates about your progress as an FYI (which she can easily forward to others).

3. Reframe Career Conversations

If your organization has gone through restructuring or downsizing, you might feel awkward about asking your boss for time to discuss your career goals. But you can do this in a way that's helpful for both of you.

As always, you're more likely to get promoted or achieve other career goals when you make clear to others that you're thinking about more than what you want. That's especially true today. Your boss will be more receptive when you frame your message more like this:

Given the recent organizational changes, how can I best use my skills and experience to make a difference? I want to continue to grow as a leader and add more value to the company. 

4. Remember What Works for You

While our work environment has changed, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to building relationships or raising your visibility. The same fundamental principles hold true. You may just need to adapt them a little for the work-at-home world.

That's the message I gave one of my former clients when we caught up recently. She had just started a new job and was worried about how to get to know her new colleagues and work effectively with them without ever meeting them face to face.

Here's the surprising thing: As an experienced executive in an externally facing role, she has built her career on her ability to successfully cultivate strong, authentic relationships. But during this period of significant change, she kept thinking about what may be difficult instead of focusing on what she already knows that can help her. 

Take a moment now to jot down strategies you have used to increase your visibility and advance your career so far. How would you adapt those strategies for the current environment? Some strategies you may not need to adapt at all. For example, you can establish a regular cadence of sharing one or two accomplishments each week, forward positive feedback you’ve received, or be fully present to engage more impactfully.

5. Keep Growing as a Leader

It's totally understandable if you haven't had a spare moment in the past six months to even consider professional development. But hopefully you've started to create some capacity in your schedule to reflect about where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. Investing in building your skills and expertise is one way to strategically advance your career, differentiate yourself and boost your confidence. 

Even before the pandemic, online learning opportunities were dramatically expanding. Think about the type of virtual experience that could help you develop your leadership skills. Start by checking out my WOW! (Women on the Way to peak performance) Program℠. I've delivered WOW! at top corporations, and it is now available as a self-paced program that you can complete on your own, with a colleague or through your own informal learning circle.

Your Pillars of Support

RBG inspired and touched so many. In honor of her memory, appreciate who has been there for you during these challenging times and tag them here.

The First Step to Making Your Career Pandemic-Proof

As an executive coach who specializes in working with high-performing women, I've closely watched how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women's careers. 

In both news reports and conversations with clients and other leaders, I'm hearing that professional women disproportionately handle the added domestic work (like managing kids' online learning) caused by the pandemic. As a result, some have decided to leave the workforce while others are approaching burnout as they try to juggle it all. Those who remain in the workforce face the added challenge of making their accomplishments more visible in a virtual environment.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

As the pandemic continues, it poses a threat to the gains women have made in the workplace during recent years, especially in pay and promotions.

What can you do to protect your career amid these difficult circumstances? Let’s start by talking about how to manage things on the home front, to keep you showing up at your best personally and professionally. In my next article, I’ll share what strategic self-promotion can look like in today’s environment.

Managing It All

Even in normal times, women take on a greater share of responsibilities at home than their male partners do. Women spend more time on childcare and housework, and are more likely to interrupt their careers to care for a family member. The pandemic has only exacerbated that situation, especially with so many women working from home.

So how can women shift to a more sustainable way of working and living? It all starts with the strategic pauses that I recommended in a past article. During one of those essential pauses, answer these key questions:

• What does the full picture of your life look like right now? Getting a clearer picture will help you notice what is and isn’t working. How chained are you to your phone and computer, especially if you’re not commuting to an office anymore? How much do you work in the evenings or on weekends? How big is your role in your kids' schooling? How many added responsibilities, like grocery shopping or taking care of elderly parents, are you managing? How much time do you allocate to people and activities that energize you?  And, even more importantly, how is all of this affecting you — your sleep, diet, exercise, stress level, and how you’re showing up with colleagues and loved ones? 

• What do you want life to look like? Be really specific. What do you really want for yourself? For example, you may want to carve out 30 minutes to an hour of time just for you each day to recharge or unwind. Or to have quality time with your family from 6-8 every weeknight without any work distractions. Or to get help with the most time-consuming tasks that eat into your personal time. Or to reduce the high volume of email, instant messages and texts from your team so that you have time to focus on priorities.

• What needs to change? Once you’ve defined the picture of what you want, it should lead to conversations about how to make it happen. At work, it could mean helping others understand how your schedule works, arming your team with the strategic questions they should ask themselves before they fire off a request to you or delegating in ways that develop your team. Or it could be about resetting expectations about reasonable turnaround times on requests.

At home, identify some simple changes you can make. Sit down with your spouse or partner and other family members to manage and more equitably share the domestic workload. For example, ordering out a little more often could mean that both of you have some evenings where you don’t have to cook – and that you can reinvest the time in something else that matters to you. Online grocery shopping may make it easier to delegate grocery shopping to someone else in the family. Remember to add some fun in there for all of you together, like doing something active outside (to get more exercise and quality time). Get creative.

If some of the changes you’re contemplating bump up against your high standards for yourself, remember that time is a finite resource. Saying “yes” to doing something means saying “no” to doing something else. Over the course of a week, freeing up just 15-30 minutes each day could mean gaining a few hours for bigger priorities, so be intentional about your choices.

Small steps can lead to big results, so let’s get started. Take five minutes right now to clarify two or three things what you want for yourself and one action you will take this week to move in that direction. You can find more strategies like these in "Staying in the Driver's Seat," one of the booklets in my Leadership EDGE Series℠.

Is Perfectionism Holding You Back as a Leader?

The coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic fallout are more than short-term disruptions in the way that we work. As major shifts in business continue, leaders must update their approach both to stay effective and to keep themselves from burning out.

In my last two blog articles, I talked about a couple of the most important adjustments you can make: creating more capacity in your day and using that capacity to recharge and reflect.

Today, I want to look at a roadblock that might be keeping you from making those changes and from being the kind of leader your team needs right now. Perfectionism may have helped you get where you are as a leader. But, especially in these fast-changing, high-pressure times, it can be a double-edged sword.

The Perils of Perfectionism

Throughout your career, you may have been recognized and promoted based on your high standards, your ability to drive results and your passion for hard work. 

But, in the current environment, many perfectionists are running into problems:

• With demands increasing in both your work life and your personal life, it's getting impossible to keep all the balls in the air, no matter how many hours you put in.

• Your team members are trying your patience. They aren't getting things done, and they don't even seem to hear you sometimes.

• You feel like you're being rushed to make decisions without your usual thought and deliberation.

Perfectionism and Your Leadership Identity

When the going gets tough, perfectionists tend to respond by just digging in harder. This is not just about habits; it’s about identity.

I saw this recently play out with one of my clients. She's on track to move into a C-suite role, and she's worked very hard to get there.

In fact, the executive who's currently in that role says my client is working harder than she needs to and believes she would perform even better if she eased up some.

But she can't adjust her expectations for herself. That's true in both her work life and her home life. Like many of us, she's dealing with significant changes domestically as well. She's working from home all day with her spouse, kids, and other family members. And she has high standards for herself on that front, too.

In the long run, her approach isn’t sustainable and her perfectionism sabotages her longer-term goals.

Less Perfect, More Productive

So what are some more productive ways to honor our high standards without driving ourselves — and others — crazy? Here are a few ideas:

• Reassess your priorities. What was of paramount importance (or at least seemed to be) just a few months ago may be less important now. For example, maybe you were used to doing exhaustive research before making decisions. But it's now necessary to reach decisions more rapidly, even if you have to do so based on less information. As author and former clinical psychologist Alice Boyes told Harvard Business Review, sometimes it's more productive to be “less perfect about some things, so you can concentrate on what’s important.” 

• Set realistic expectations for yourself. Let's say you're about to start an annual project that, in the past, has taken you about a day to complete. This year, though, you have more responsibilities on your plate because your team has shrunk. And you're working from home while your kids are also home doing online school. What will it really take to get this project done under these circumstances? It's only realistic to assume that you will need more time than before. So go ahead and give yourself a bit of a cushion in your planning and negotiate the timeline with your manager.

• Set realistic expectations for others. Are your team members not themselves lately? You might be used to telling them something once and then they get it done without a hitch. If that has stopped happening, don't automatically assume there's a performance issue. Remember that fear and stress can keep others from hearing you. And your team members might be experiencing any number of stressors, from fears about their health or a loved one's, to a spouse's job loss, to difficult questions about what's best for their family. 

With that in mind, regularly ask your team members how they are doing. What's going on in their lives that could affect their work? How can you adjust your communication style based on their new reality? That might mean talking more on the front end of projects to ensure you are both on the same page. Or it could mean making more frequent progress check-ins.

This week, identify one way that perfectionism is showing up in your expectations for yourself or for your team, and one step you will take to adapt your approach. For more strategies on effective leadership, ones that can help you as you deal with challenges, pick up a copy of my book "Show Up. Step Up. Step Out."

One Thing Video Series: Do You Practice What You Preach?

Do your team members take your feedback to heart? If you're not noticing the changes you'd like to see, consider whether you're modeling the behaviors you want your direct reports to show. I explain more about the importance of "practicing what you preach" in my latest One Thing You Can Do video.

Want to Be More Productive? Pause

Over the past week, I coached at least four high-performing leaders on the importance of carving out time for critical work. Although they know this matters, they are having difficulty making it happen.

For example, one client told me that he regularly blocks time on his calendar, but when the dedicated time slot rolls around, something interesting happens. Instead of tackling the work he intended to complete, he starts responding to emails.

So why is he getting bogged down in email when he knows it’s not the biggest priority?  The answer is simple: He is tired — and the critical work he should do is mentally taxing. 

Reducing the size of his email inbox still makes him feel productive — like he did accomplish something. But he knows that he is sabotaging his own effectiveness. To change this pattern, he has to go beyond blocking time on his calendar to address his underlying mental fatigue.

In my last blog article, I shared the importance of putting a little breathing room in your schedule, especially if your level of busyness has reached new heights in this crazy  environment. Today we’ll build on that idea. Once you have more capacity in your schedule, how can you use it to lead more effectively?

What Kind of Break Do You Need?

High performers often instinctively respond to stressful times by doing, doing, doing. But here's an important distinction: Being in motion does not necessarily mean that you're moving forward.

None of us are built to work nonstop. In fact, researchers say we need a pause about every 90 minutes so that our brains can consolidate information. After reading my last article, I hope you identified some strategies to integrate more pauses into your day.

So, how should you use your break? Start by checking in with yourself. During busy days, you can easily lose touch with how you are really feeling. Emotional intelligence — knowing what's going on internally for you and taking effective action based on that self-understanding — is key to being an effective leader.

On your next break, simply notice what’s going on for you physically and mentally. What’s your stress level? How connected do you feel? What’s your level of energy and engagement?

Once you realize how you're doing, you’ll know the type of break that will help you the most. If you've been on back-to-back calls, a walk to get some fresh air, stretching or deep breathing and quiet might be the most restorative things you can do. On the other hand, if you've had your head down doing complex work on your own, you might want something more interactive, like checking in with family or friends or a quick conversation. One size does not fit all, so do what works best for you. 

The Proactive Pause

Be intentional about how you use breaks to refocus your time and energy. In other words, determine where you can have the biggest impact on the business and redirect your time accordingly. When you're “in the weeds,” you may not notice anything beyond what's right in front of you: your next email, meeting or fire drill.

Even taking just 10 minutes to reflect can boost your productivity and effectiveness. Use these questions to get started:

• How well does my calendar align with what’s most critical?

• If my calendar is out of sync, what can I delegate, defer or stop doing?

• Which critical meetings do I need to prepare for in the next two weeks?

• What issues or obstacles should I prioritize and proactively manage?

• Whom do I need to check in with? How in tune am I with my manager and team?

To get more done in less time, use some of the breaks in your schedule to proactively reflect.

What's Coming Up

So far, we've worked through two big steps toward developing a more sustainable approach to work during these stressful times:

1. Create capacity in your schedule for breaks.

2. Use those breaks to restore yourself mentally and to reconnect to what matters most.

In my next article, I'll help you clear a mental block that's making a lot of high performers unproductive and even unhappy right now. In the meantime, I invite you to explore my self-paced tools that will help you keep growing as a leader no matter how busy you are.

One Thing Video Series: How Are You Showing Up?

Your presence — the way you show up with others — is one of the key parts of your personal brand as a leader. The unpredictability of our world and our work lives today can affect how you show up. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I'll give you a few ideas for making sure that the way you're coming across reflects how you want others to see you.

How to Stop 'Getting By' and Start Leading Strategically

Back in March, the global pandemic upended the way we work. For most of us, this initially felt like a short-term crisis. So we dug in to power through.

But now, almost five months later, you might be stuck in this mode — which damages both your executive presence and your career prospects.

As the deep shifts in our work lives continue, we have to find a more sustainable approach. Today I'm kicking off a new series of blog articles to help you pause, reconnect with the bigger picture and be the leader you want to be even in the most challenging of times.

At Home, We're Working More 

As an executive coach, I'm seeing too many leaders right now who are packing their calendars, working at all hours and saying "yes" to everything.

What's driving this? Cuts and restructuring at many organizations are leaving fewer people to do the same amount of work (or even more). There's also a new urgency around showing your value in order to protect your job.

At the same time, working from home is making our jobs more logistically challenging and blurring the lines between our work and personal lives.

When Microsoft recently studied its own newly remote workforce, it discovered some dramatic changes in how employees were working:

• Time spent in meetings each week rose by 10%.

• Using instant messaging activity as an indicator, Microsoft found that employees were working more during lunch and evenings. Weekend work also grew.

• Also based on instant messaging, managers' workload has grown more than that of individual contributors.

• All of this adds up to a workweek that, on average, is about four hours longer.

Are You Neglecting Strategy?

This relentless pace has consequences. You might think that your hard work makes you a team player. But constantly focusing on the tactical vs. the strategic actually reduces the value you create as a leader. If you're always "putting out fires," you have less time for your truly important work, such as tracking what's going on with your team, motivating and engaging your team members and managing up with your bosses.

Remember also that, as a leader, you are always in the "invisible spotlight." Others are constantly drawing conclusions about your leadership based on what they observe. As working from home eliminates our in-person interactions, your virtual executive presence takes on greater weight. So think about what messages you are conveying by, for example, sending a lot of after-hours emails or arriving late to Zoom calls because you were in another video meeting.

Give Yourself Some Space

It's time to start thinking beyond just getting through these unprecedented times. How can you do so in a way that shows others that you are a strong leader and that sets the stage for your future success?

The first step is simply freeing up some more capacity in your schedule. To do so, take a moment to think about the most important work you need to be doing right now. Has it changed recently? Do you need to adjust your schedule to shift more time toward your top priorities?

Next, think about what you can get off of your plate. Are there meetings you can cancel or decline? Can you turn a one-hour meeting into a 30-minute one? Can you delegate more? Adding even a few minutes back into your day can provide some relief if you're feeling frenzied and overscheduled.

In my next article, I'll show you how to make the most of the capacity you've restored to your schedule. In the meantime, I invite you to explore my self-paced tools that will help you keep growing as a leader no matter how busy you are.

What Does Your Decision-Making Look Like?

As a manager or executive, how many decisions would you guess that you make each year?

Three thousand? Three hundred thousand?

Try 3 billion.

And the stakes are high when it comes to getting all of those billions of decisions right. Researchers have found a 95% correlation between effective decision-making and financial performance. 

Sadly, they've also found that 98% of leaders fail to apply best practices when making decisions.

With all of the recent upheaval in the way we work, you and your colleagues may have been forced out of your comfort zones when it comes to how you make decisions. But I believe that can be a good thing. Here's how to turn those on-the-fly changes into lasting improvements in decision-making.

What Has Worked For You During This Crisis?

The past few months have turned up the intensity on decision-making at work. Your team may be trying to get the same amount of work (or maybe even more) done with fewer people. At the same time, you may be discarding existing plans to react to and get ahead of rapidly changing events.

Those are big challenges. But I'm seeing lots of organizations really rising to those challenges by streamlining, expediting and improving their decision-making processes.

Such changes have been spurred by the extraordinary circumstances we're all working under. But you may want to keep some of them even after your team or organization moves out of crisis mode.

Improving the way you make decisions can have a big impact on the bottom line. Excess bureaucracy costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion a year. Slow decision-making hampers innovation, productivity, resilience and growth.

So I want to encourage you to check in with yourself and with your team to see what you've learned about your decision-making process this year. What have you done differently? What has worked well? What do you want to keep doing?

You might have answers like these:

• "We don't need as much information as we thought we did to make effective decisions. So we can save time on information gathering."

• "It's working well for us to have fewer people weigh in on decisions. Decision quality hasn't suffered, everyone still feels engaged, and we're reaching decisions faster."

• "We've all gotten better at building a consensus, which is also speeding up our work."

• "We've seen how clear communication expedites decision-making, and we now have some communication best practices to use as we make decisions in the future."

• "We used to let roadblocks slow down our decision-making, but now we know more about how to remove them or work around them."

As with many other things, making better decisions comes down to noticing what works so you can keep doing it — and do it more often. Carve out a few minutes today to reflect about your own decision-making. For more strategies on effective leadership, even during difficult times, pick up a copy of my book "Show Up. Step Up. Step Out."

How to Keep Your Cool and Communicate Clearly

Have you lost your cool at work lately? Or been on the receiving end of someone else losing their cool?

You're not alone. These are stressful times (to put it mildly!). And when we're under stress, it's harder to communicate effectively. Showing up the way you want to with your colleagues takes some extra intention, especially during difficult conversations.

How Stress Undermines Communication 

Even if you normally communicate with ease at the office, you might notice that it's more difficult lately.

That's because your brain can shift into a totally different mode under stress. Instead of being calm, creative and empathetic, you may be in "fight or flight" mode. So if you surprised yourself by using a sharp tone and harsh words during a recent encounter, this is probably what was happening.

If the person you are talking to is also stressed, it compounds the issue. They will have more trouble processing what you're telling them and are more likely to get defensive. For example, maybe your direct report failed to do something that you requested even though you thought you had explained it clearly more than once. Or perhaps they acted offended after you made a seemingly neutral statement.

On top of stress, many of us are communicating more via phone and video calls these days instead of in-person meetings. This makes it even harder to understand and be understood. More than half of communication comes from body language. So we're losing a lot of important cues even on video calls.

Do Others Hear Your Words or Your Tone?

You can see all of this play out in a recent coaching call I had with a client.

She needed to have a conversation with an employee who hadn’t completed critical, time-sensitive work. It's one of those talks that nobody looks forward to, even in less-stressful times. So we decided to role-play the conversation to help her prepare.

When we acted out the conversation together, her tone has such an edge that I couldn't even hear what she was really saying. Her annoyance and frustration clouded the entire message. It didn't feel like she wanted to understand what might have happened. Instead, it felt like my client had already made up her mind that the employee couldn’t possibly have a good reason.

I asked my client to go through the role-play again, this time from a place of curiosity, truly seeking to understand what had happened from the employee’s perspective. Her tone was more neutral this time, but she shared so much detail that I got lost.

On the third try, I asked her to keep the same tone but to focus on the "headlines" first, and then details. This time she nailed it. When we debriefed, she laughed, telling me that she simply repeated what she had said in our first role-play. The difference was that this time I “heard” her, because her tone was more open and not so accusatory.

This exercise was eye-opening for my client. She realized that in her drive for results, she doesn’t always stop to evaluate her approach and how it could affect the relationship with her employee.

If you find yourself on edge a bit more lately, a role-playing session like the one I had with my client could help you prepare for a difficult conversation. It can help keep those strong emotions in check and prevent things from escalating.

Before you move on with your day, I want to challenge you to identify one action you will take this week. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Assess your patience level on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being high. Self-awareness can do wonders in helping you make a shift.

• Find a safe place to vent your frustrations. And, no, that safe place is not at work. Remember that handwriting your thoughts (uncensored) on a piece of paper can quickly do the trick.

• Identify one action you can take to reduce your stress level and infuse some positive energy into your life.

Review the key principles of clear communication, which are more important ever right now. My guide "Communicating With Impact," from the Leadership EDGE℠ series, is a great starting point.

Are You Waiting for Things to Get 'Back to Normal'?

A lot of high performers have been pushing hard lately, figuring that they'll catch their breath when things get "back to normal."

If that sounds like you, I want you to pause for a moment and reconsider your approach. The seismic changes we are all experiencing continue to unfold. Since "no normal is the new normal," what does that mean for the way you work and live?

This Is a Year Like No Other

When we're so busy with day-to-day tasks, it's easy to forget everything that's changed in just the past 12 or so weeks.

Covid-19, which was declared a pandemic on March 11, may have you worried about your own health or the health of loved ones. You may have also experienced profound changes at work. The economic impact of the pandemic has spurred furloughs and layoffs. With those cuts, people who still have jobs face heavier workloads. Many of us also began working from home — while simultaneously caring for our kids all day as schools closed.

And then, in the midst of the pandemic, George Floyd's death set off protests, civil unrest and a national reckoning with racism. If you are a Black American, you may have felt more anxiety and depression. On the business front, many organizations are making changes to better support diversity. (And some have faced public allegations of racism.)

That's a lot! As people have been pointing out on social media, it's like we're experiencing the 1918 flu epidemic, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s all at once.

Are You Stuck in Crisis Mode?

Understandably, a lot of us have been working in crisis mode — or "just trying to get through."

The problem with that approach is that it’s not sustainable with all that is going on. Some states (including Texas, where I live) have seen a surge in coronavirus cases. We're also seeing a new wave of layoffs. For those still employed, working from home remains widespread, and work-life balance is suffering. And while some districts plan to reopen schools this fall, it's far from certain how that will happen and the changes it will require. At the same time, the protests sparked by George Floyd's death continue, and new incidents (like the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks) further increase tensions.

The bottom line? "Normal" might be a long way off. You might be used to simply powering through short-term crises at work. But that isn't sustainable during this period of ongoing change. As an executive coach, I'm seeing a lot of fatigue among high performers who are relentlessly pushing themselves.

Strategies to Accept and Adapt

If you're feeling exhausted, here are some strategies to avoid burnout:

• Focus on the present. None of us can predict the changes and disruption that are ahead of us.

• Use your body to change your mind. Activities like physical exercise, dancing to music you love, singing, playing with your kids, or doing things that make you laugh can be very effective.

• Be kind to yourself. For example, if you always push for perfection in your work, ease the pressure. Your "good enough" may be more than good enough right now.

• We’ve all had moments of irritation and impatience. It’s totally understandable. Find constructive ways to release the negativity so that you don't unleash it on others. Start by pulling the thoughts and feelings out of your head (uncensored) and onto a piece of paper. You’ll be surprised at how well this works.

• Reflect about what you really need. What have you learned from the past few weeks about your own tendencies in this “new normal”? And what does that mean you should stop, start, or keep doing?

• Give yourself a break. Maybe you have to defer your dream summer vacation but can you find another way to recharge? A day trip or just taking a few days off, even if you just stay at home, might do the trick. If nothing else, deliberately add breaks into your back-to-back work schedule.

You can't control what happens next in this tumultuous year but you can make choices to improve your mindset and reenergize. This week, identify one thing you will do better navigate the new normal. My self-paced tools may help you navigate some of the challenges you are facing.

One Thing Video Series - Giving Yourself Permission

In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, we’ll take a look at how all the change of the past 12+ weeks has affected you and how to move forward.

Download Some Inspiration

May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month. To mark this occasion, my friend Tracey Doi, CFO of Toyota North America, spearheaded a project called "Inspiration for our Next Generation Leaders." She asked me to contribute to this guide which features Asian American executives from a variety of industries and companies, including American Airlines, Bank of America, EY, and Toyota, among others.  Tracey shared the guide at Toyota, but sent it to us share with others who could benefit.

Contributors' Asian roots include Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan. Some of us immigrated to the U.S. when we were very young; others are third, fourth and even seventh generation. But one thing we all have in common is a passion for supporting, inspiring and developing our next generation of Asian American leaders. 

Whether you are early in your career or an executive, I hope you’ll enjoy reading the words of wisdom from some of the people I have gotten to know  including Tracey Doi, Bonnie Clinton, Caren Lock, Thear Suzuki, Cynthia Yung, Radhika Zaveri, Jin-Ya Huang, Carina Reyes and Sakina Foster.

Here's a little preview of my contribution:

As a first-generation immigrant, I remember wrestling with how much I wanted to stand out, to be “me” vs. blend in. In my early years at Deloitte Consulting, I prioritized fitting in because I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my credibility. Although I have had a very successful career, I now know this made me play smaller and lose important parts of myself in the shuffle.

To read my full essay, as well as those of other contributors, you can click on the image below to download "Inspiration for our Next Generation Leaders." And remember to share it with others!

One Thing Video Series - When Things Don't Go as Planned

When life isn't going as planned, there's one question you can ask yourself that will change everything. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I explain how to use this transformative question.

One Thing Video Series - Maximize the Opportunities in Front of You

How much are you noticing and maximizing the unique opportunities in front of you? Choose from three quick strategies in the next installment of One Thing You Can Do.