3 Minutes to More Effective Leadership

If you could improve your leadership in just three minutes a day, would you make the time to do it? What if this magic 3 minutes consisted of doing... pretty much nothing at all? Sound too good to be true? In leadership, our ability to connect with people and align them towards common goals is a function, in large part, of our leadership presence.

Presence is how we show up. It's the quality of our be-ing (as opposed to the content of our "do-ing"). In any given moment, our presence may be grounded and focused -- or checked-out and scattered.

When the quality of our presence is high, we are more inspiring to others, more connected to ourselves and more effective in our leadership.

But back to those 3 minutes. It is impossible to cultivate presence if we never pause -- if we're always rushing from meeting to meeting, tied to our smart phones, and feeling forever behind.

The simple act of sitting in silence with our breath, when practiced over time, can radically shift our presence -- even if we do it for only 3 minutes a day. The act of sitting is simple (but not always easy):

• Find a seat on the floor or in a chair where you can sit comfortably but remain upright and alert.
• Close your eyes and start to notice your body, in particular the places where it connects with the floor and/or the chair.
• Tune into your breath, following each inhale and exhale.
• Whenever your mind wanders, gently direct your attention back to your breath. (This will happen many times. Returning your attention to your breath is what you are practicing here, over and over.)
• Continue this for 3 minutes or more (you may want to set a timer before you start).
• When time is up, slowly open your eyes, start to move your body, and return to your surroundings.

Immediately after sitting you may find that you feel calmer, more grounded, and less frazzled. Over time, your attention, patience, and ability to empathize may significantly shift for the better. (I know I've seen these effects, and science agrees.)

If you could make time to sit like this daily, how would it impact your leadership presence? Give it a try, and let me know.

From the Vault: Pondering Purpose in the (Jewish) New Year

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For those who celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, now is a time of reflection, of returning to that which we value most, and of reconciling our best intentions with our actions. 

In the spirit of the holiday, I offer this post from the vault: Pondering Purpose in the New Year.  Whether or not you are celebrating the birth of a new year this week, I invite you to take a moment to step back and reflect with this exercise.  

How can you call upon your purpose to do your best work in the year to come?

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Today I've been revisiting some of my favorite perspectives on the concept of purpose.  I am particularly moved by these words by choreographer Martha Graham:

[quote] There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action.  And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares to other expressions.  It is simply your business to keep the channel open.[/quote]

Reflecting upon these words, what resonates?

• What is the unique energy or action you will contribute to the world?
• How can you more fully express it in the year to come?
• How have you blocked its expression in the past?
• How will you remove these blocks this year?
• What's the possibility you create when you "keep the channel open"?

Happy New Year.

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Photo credit: loop_oh on Flickr.

The One Planning (and Focusing and Decision-Making) Tool I Couldn't Live Without

  Three years ago at the Selah Leadership Program, I was introduced to a planning tool that I've used every single day since.  This magic tool?  POP.

The POP Model was developed by organizational consultants Leslie Sholl Jaffe and Randall J. Alford.  POP stands for Purpose, Outcomes, and Process, and it's a simple and effective tool for keeping yourself and others focused aligned in almost any context.

Purpose answers the question, why is this important?  

Outcomes answers the question, what do we most need to accomplish?

and Process answers the question, how will we accomplish the outcomes?

It is easy to see why these three little questions have so much resonance.

• Purpose fuzzy?  You are likely to find yourself spinning your wheels, lost and not sure how you got where you are.
• Outcomes unclear?  Team members may be working toward different goals, reducing the group's overall impact.
• Process ignored?  You'll find yourself in the middle of a dead-end meeting, wondering why there is so much talk and so little progress toward what you really need to be getting done.

POP In Action

To use the model, articulate the Purpose of what you are taking on, your desired Outcomes, and the Process for how you will get to the outcomes.  In some contexts it is beneficial to use POP on your own, and in others it can be a powerful tool for aligning a group.  POP can be the basis for a 5-minute back-of-the-envelope exercise, or an all-day, organization-wide planning endeavor.

Say you have an upcoming meeting with your staff to plan your big 2012 fundraising event.  Before the meeting, you might sit down and take 5-10 minutes to sketch out a POP for yourself:

• Purpose: The purpose of this meeting is to kick-off planning for the 2012 fundraising event.
• Outcomes: We need to leave this meeting with:
  • Clarity around who will spearhead each major piece of work.
  • A decision on if we will hire a marketing consultant or handle that in-house.
  • An understanding on the part of the Development team of the Board's expectations for how much $$$ this event will bring in.
• Process:  In order to get to these outcomes:
  • I need to think about who I believe should take on each major piece of work, before the meeting.
  • I should look at that research we did two years ago about marketing consultants so I can go into the day with a ballpark figure of how much it would cost to outsource.
  • I sh0uld also have a conversation with my Development Director to make sure he understands the Board's target for this event -- that way he can help me get his team on board during the meeting.
  • Finally, I need to design an agenda for this meeting that will produce the outcomes I want -- so that we don't get lost in the weeds.

POP is a powerful tool to use in meetings. The meeting facilitator can either lead the group in collaboratively defining the meeting's Purpose, Outcomes and Process in real-time, or can bring a pre-defined POP to a meeting and solicit group-buy in.  A meeting where the whole team knows the POP -- why we are there, what we are trying to get to, and how we will get there -- is a meeting worth everyone's time.

POP can be used at the beginning of projects -- Why are we taking on this project? What do we want to accomplish by doing it? How will we accomplish that?  And, it can be a test of alignment, mid-project, when things seem to be drifting off course -- Why were we doing this project again?  What were we trying to accomplish?  How can we get back on track?

For me, the power of POP is in slowing down and thinking about what I really want to get out of the effort I am putting into a meeting, a project, or a partnership.  In a group context, going through the POP process can reveal hidden assumptions, biases and leaps in logic that would otherwise derail the group down the line.

It is no exaggeration to say that I use POP every single day.  I may have even POP'ed a vacation once or twice!   Try it out, and let me know how you experience the simple power of POP.

Want to learn more about applying POP in your organization?  Learn more about working with me.

5 Questions for Deeper Self Awareness in Sticky Situations

Deep self-knowledge -- an awareness of our own thoughts, feelings, behavior, and motivations -- is one of the cornerstones of thoughtful leadership, yet it is often neglected.  In the rush of everyday work life, with its cascading opportunities and challenges, we can easily forget to keep our "selves" in mind.   Yet, whether you pay conscious attention to your self or not, you are the person driving everything you do. Being aware of what is driving you and how you are showing up to others is especially important in sticky situations -- whether it be a conflict with a coworker, a disagreement with your partner at home, or a misunderstanding with a friend.  We can become so reactive and responsive to the other people we are tangling with that we don't examine what's going on with our own selves.

Here are five questions to increase your self awareness when things get stressful.  To use them, you first need to acknowledge that you are in a sticky situation and decide to step outside of the mess for a minute.  Once you do that, take a deep breath and consider the following:

How is this situation exposing my limitations to  myself or others?

What underlying beliefs or values are influencing my experience of this situation?

What effect am I having on others?

What's going on in my body right now (pulse, breathing, muscle tension, how I'm sitting/standing)?

What is my role in this situation?

(update: see a great 6th question in the comments - and add your own!)

These questions matter, of course, because the only person one can truly change is oneself.  In sticky situations, our focus is often squarely on the other person -- what they are doing, saying, and thinking. By focusing on yourself for even a few minutes, you will be able to reapproach the situation with greater clarity, calm and insight.  Give it a try.

What questions do you ask yourself when you are in a sticky situation?