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Leadership Email – Diagnosing the Problem of Yourself…

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Here’s my weekly email to leaders in Reno County from October 1:

Greeting Fellow Leaders of Reno County and Happy October.

I love the resources provided from the Kansas Leadership Center.  I just opened my snail mail box on Friday to find a postcard from them entitled “Take Care of Yourself.”  I want to include its contents here for those of you who might not get the mailings.
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF
A resource for Managing Self created by Kansas Leadership Center alumni
“Leadership is risky.  You stand a better chance of succeeding when you’re at your best.”  This resource is designed to help you engage in civic leadership more effectively.  It is based on experiences shared by KLC alumni in a September 5, 2012 “On the Balcony” conference call, hosted by KLC President & CEO Ed O’Malley.
WHAT DOES TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF MEAN?
·         Recognizing when you need to take care of yourself.
·         Finding what balances you.  Personal projects, quiet time for self, physical activity.
·         Having kindness and compassion for yourself and the work you’re doing.
WHY IS TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF NECESSARY FOR YOUR LEADERSHIP?
·         When we neglect to take care of ourselves, we can’t bring our best selves to work.  If we can’t bring our best selves, we’re less likely able to engage in leadership effectively.
THREE WAYS TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF:
1.       Take quiet time for yourself: Prayer, reflection, meditation.
2.       Care for your physical needs: get enough sleep and exercise regularly.
3.       Ask for what you want or need.
WHY DON’T WE TAKE CARE OF OURSELVES MORE?
·         Competing values.  We choose to make managing work and family more important than taking care of ourselves.
·         It’s risky.  We fear job loss, income loss, and the perception that we’re selfish.
·         Caring for ourselves is not valued enough culturally.
WARNING SIGNS THAT INDICATE YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF:
·         You become restless, irritable and discontent.
·         You can no longer meet people where they are.
·         You start forgetting things.
·         You become physically sick.
·         You take things personally that were meant as constructive criticism.
I know I’ve bombarded you with a lot to think about here, but mull it over and consider how you might better take care of yourself and make progress as an effective leader.
Until next time…

Leadership Email – Building Bridges

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Each Monday I write an email for leaders in Reno County.  Here’s the one I wrote on Monday, 9/24/12 entitled “Building Bridges”.

Well, it’s nearly done.  Every day on my morning commute through Hutch Rush Hour, I glance at that interchange at 30th and K-61 and it even got a nice write up in Monday’s paper.  The Pedestrian Bridge is nearly done.  Bridges are important.  They connect things.  They bring two opposing sides together in a safe way.  Bridges help us get across obstacles.  They encourage our overcoming impasse.  They are certainly needed in our physical world.
This is also true in our acts of leadership.  On the one hand, leadership takes courage.  It’s risky.  Leadership means we sometimes have to push out into hard and uncharted territory.  But, on the other hand, we have to opportunity to diagnose situations and, in purposeful engagement, see progress at any time and in any place.  One question in the KLC Quick Guide encouraging us to energize others asks, “How do we build bridges between the factions?”  Great question indeed.  We often look at factions very differently.  A question I’ve asked in my mind before is, “How can I work around the faction without a bridge?”  But, like we’ve seen, bridges are important.  Bridges will help us make more progress.  Bridges will give us a bigger and often better result in the long run.
So, as our community prepares to open another physical bridge, let it be a reminder that we have the opportunity to lead and energize others, building bridges not walls.  Let’s step into this kind of leadership, then, and see if it doesn’t help us make progress on the issues we care about the most.  

Leadership Email – Band-Aids & Cancer

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Here’s the article I wrote for Reno County Leaders on Monday:

Happy Post-Fair Monday, Fellow Reno County Leaders…

We’ve all heard that phrase, “Don’t put a band-aid on a cancer.”  And we know what it means, don’t we?  It means don’t try to solve problems in ways that are ineffective.  This got me thinking recently about how quick I am to forget to distinguish between technical and adaptive challenges.  I tend to think that most problems I encounter can be solved with a simple solution.  But, the true reality for those of us who deal with people is that most of the problems we are working to solve are more adaptive in nature. 
To clearly spell this out, I’m helped by how the KLC, in its Leadership Lexicon, defines Adaptive Challenges or Adaptive Work: “problems that resist easy solutions and in which new learning is needed, often causing an examination of the context of a situation and the individuals involved including the way things typically work and the way we work.  Contrasted with technical problems in which known remedies and expertise can be applied.”  Often, in our work as leaders, there are elements blended in our leadership.  Part of the solution may very well be technical, but there is a huge adaptive element that must be considered. 
Part of our acts of leadership, then, especially in diagnosing a situation, must be distinguishing between the technical and adaptive elements and even exploring the adaptive interpretations that emerge.  Band aids don’t fix cancer.  And, your trying to solve all the leadership challenges you face with known remedies and expertise doesn’t work either.  Step into leadership by seeing those adaptive challenges for what they are, exercising leadership by applying wise solutions to these.  And just see if the effect isn’t more progress on these issues you care about so deeply. 
Have a great week.
Oh, and if you’d like to dig deeper, here’s a journal article from the KLC which defines Adaptive Work.

Leadership Email – Leadership & Coaching (Football)

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Here’s my email to Leaders in Reno County from Monday, September 10…
I’ve been alluding in recent weeks to the latest journal of the Kansas Leadership Center.  One article in this issue might be especially relevant to us (especially this time of year): The Leadership Example of Bill Snyder.  Whether we cheer for K-State or not, we can all find relevant leadership applications in the life of this amazing leader.  I thought this summary from Mary Hale Tolar, who directs the School of Leadership Studies in Manhattan, was especially enlightening: “Coach Snyder’s belief in hard work and incremental improvement perhaps ring most true for me.  Exercising leadership consists of helping followers clarify their individual and collective goals, enrolling followers in a collective vision, and then doing the work necessary to improve.  He believes larger goals must be broken down into intermediate goals that are believable and achievable.  Exercising leadership takes hard work, a plan, ability to assess and adjust the plan, all in a pursuit of a goal – a purpose worth the effort.” 
Let this summary be your motivation today to do the hard work of leadership.  It is hard work but has amazing benefits to make progress on issues we care about.  Diagnose a situation, intervene skillfully, and energize others through it and see if it doesn’t help us make our community a better, healthier place.   

Tuesday Leadership Lesson – HeartSpeak and HardSpeak

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Last week we discussed how speaking from the heart is so needed to carefully draw others into our underlying motivation.  While this is important in intervening skillfully, for this to truly energize others, our heartspeaking must sometimes include hardspeaking, specifically, speaking to loss.

Again, the latest Journal of the Kansas Leadership Center proved helpful, when they say on p.106:
“‘We must do something’ always solves more problems than ‘something must be done.’   In building a trustworthy process, we have to be transparent about what motivates us, but we also need to be transparent about what we may be asking others to sacrifice for the cause of progress.  Speaking to Loss is a part of that process.  Always remember to acknowledge the possible losses of members of the factions – the people on the other side of an issue.”
Isn’t it usually the case that we are so motivated around our purpose that we are blind to how this may affect others?  Speaking to loss helps us rope in the strays, it helps us bring others to the table, it considers how our purpose and direction affects others and helps us energize them by being honest about what this might mean for us to make progress on those issues we care about so deeply.   Speak from the heart, yes.  But sometimes, we need to say the hard thing to build passport and create a process that those on the other side can appreciate.  As we do this, we will undoubtedly be more effective.  Leadership is risky. 
Hopefully giving you encouragement in your risky acts of leadership…

Tuesday Leadership Lesson: HeartSpeak

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Here’s my weekly email to leaders in Reno County…
Having taken a few weeks to encourage you to manage yourself better, I thought today we’d get after a facet of leadership that (to quote the late Cajun Chef Justin Wilson) “I guarantee” will help you intervene more skillfully: speak from the heart.  

If speaking from the heart makes you think of Valentine’s Day, then you might well be missing the point.  Speaking from the heart gets us close to purpose.  It helps expose why we care so deeply about the specific challenges in which we’re engaging. 
As the recent KS Leadership Center journal (which I’m still waiting to link to online) points out (on pp.104-105), there are some key questions involved in speaking from the heart:
1) Why are you/I working on this?
2) What do I care about most related to this challenge?
3) How often do you/I share your/my beliefs and personal stories with stakeholders?
4) Are there some stakeholders with whom you/I haven’t shared these thoughts?
You can see through these questions what speaking from the heart does both in you and your stakeholders. 
Furthermore, the Journal has us look at a continuum.  Evidently, speaking from the heart is striking a balance between and not becoming overly emotional or overly detached.  Where would you fall on this chart?

Today, then, no matter the leadership issue you’re engaged with.  Speak from the heart and see if it doesn’t help you make progress on the issues you care about so deeply.

Leadership: Take Care of Yourself

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Each week, I write a short email to graduates of the Leadership Reno County program.  Here’s this week’s:

Last week I posted an encouragement to “Take Care of Yourself.”  As I was digging out from being gone, I came across the latest KLC Journal (Vol 4, Issue 1 – Summer 2012, which will hopefully be online soon) and in it, under the learning laboratory section on p.102, was the following items to encourage you to “Take Care of Yourself.”  Here’s the info and questions:
 “It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.” – Lena Horne
 “As you engage others in difficult work, pay special attention to maintaining your own energy and enthusiasm.  Take time to renew yourself.  Call on friends and colleagues for support.  Be purposeful about taking care of yourself over the long haul.”
 “Ask yourself these questions:
1) How do you know when your energy is waning?
2) What activities, practices and places revitalize you?
3) Whom can you call on for support when you need it?
4) How might you create time or space to take care of yourself?
 These are excellent thought.  Take some time and consider these things and see if it doesn’t have an effect on your long term progress on those issues you care about so deeply.