You, A Water Balloon

Especially right now.. how about some helpful perspective about what’s going on in your head and some uncomplicated ways forward? Welcome… this is exactly that.  

That “especially right now…” phrase might be my most-uttered 3 words over the last several months, as I’ve coached and taught individuals and teams. Coaching dynamics like how we listen, connect, make meaning and coordinate– all matter more than ever before, because… 

We are all like water balloons filled a bit too full right now, and we don’t even realize it.

Look at that water balloon… it’s just sitting there looking totally normal, yet if you happen to touch it with just the right amount of pressure, it will explode.

Have you seen/felt this dynamic lately? 

Maybe you’ve noticed it in others. Maybe in yourself.  Likely both. Even though I’m coaching others every single day lately on how to handle this, I’ve still been personally blindsided by it many times in the last few months… accidentally triggering people to set off extreme reactions that feel surprising, and leave us (even me, pretty thick skinned) a bit rattled. 

The key here is this… it’s real, it’s not quite over yet, and it’s all of us.

Sensitivity is high, emotional fatigue is palbable, nervous systems are crispy, and many of our natural outlets for stress release and restoration have been restricted. While we’ve come a long way through this global challenge, fear and uncertainty have become undercurrents, now blended into our baselines. 

In those moments, we can feel simultaneously taken aback, yet charged at the same time… how are we so easily triggering? How are we so easily triggered? Why am I actually yelling back at this woman in the grocery store who I wouldn’t even be fazed by a year ago? 

Triggers to our anger/fear/pain are real, and we all have more of them than we realize right now, close to the surface, like exposed nerves. 

To be clear, so many topics which feel urgent right now are tense for folks even in normal circumstances… like politics, personal rights, racial inequity, and confronting our individual roles in societal issues. These are challenging for people to productively navigate through with one another no matter what, as we don’t have tools, training, or good models for doing so in a healthy way, especially when we disagree. Yet those predictable land mines aside, even what once was no big thing, can set us off easily right now. 

ALL of it feels more extreme, and is more volatile, because we also have these other tiny things going on, like…. 

• fear of viral contagion or death

• disruption of all normal daily activities

• restriction of all social interaction

• lack of agreement within family, team, community about (health) rules/protocols

• dissolving of (helpful) boundaries between work, school and home life

• no childcare or child outlets

• prolonged, intentional isolation

• financial hardship

• job or housing insecurity

• stripping of autonomy and choice

• loss of loved ones

…for many, many months. Whaat?

Read back over that list and just breathe into the fact that any one of those things under normal circumstances would present crippling challenge and stress. All at once and prolonged for almost a year, it defines the molotov cocktail that’s filling those water balloons, everywhere we go.

It has been going on so long, and we are so adaptive as humans, that we keep almost forgetting that we’re still in the pressure cooker. 

We don’t quite notice that our fuses are shorter, our patience is thinner, our prolonged agitation is still there, and our threshhold for strain is maxed, until… BAM!… someone says something the wrong way to us; or gives one too many suggestions for how we should improve something; or questions us on something, or confronts us about anything. That’s when it comes out, and it can be ugly. 

A natural reaction to any trigger our brains perceive as threat, is to downshift into…

Fight mode– the urge to aggressively attack physically or verbally, accusing, blaming;

Flight mode– get out or run away asap, or avoid/hide; 

or Freeze mode– shut down. 

In any of these primal instincts, our brains get emotionally hijacked, distilled to the basics to survive a bear attack. We can’t access our higher-order, rational words or thinking skills in those moments. You’ve experienced that every time you couldn’t think of your best comeback line in an argument until later that day, long after the actual argument; your system had to calm down and reset before your brain could come fully back online into normal thinking mode. That’s happening a LOT for folks right now.

The good news is… the muscles we need here are the muscles we needed all along, completely buildable. 

While sometimes just claiming our composure feels like a feat, we can also actually grow capability in some important ways through this.

Emotional self-awareness tends to collectively be one of our weakest muscles, yet we can usually get away with skating along without that strength when things are, well… normal. Yet that’s not where we are right now (hello, 2020), and our normal workarounds for this are lately failing more than serving us… 

If I ignore talking about it, and power right on by it, maybe it’ll just go away. 

If I compartmentalize that to handle later, I can just focus right here to be productive in what I need to get done. 

If I shut down all that emotion on the team, we’ll all feel better. 

Workarounds are meant to be temporary, to get through an unexpected episode or challenge with a tactical reroute… yet by design, they often solve one problem but add strain somewhere else in the system. Handling it “later” doesn’t suffice when your workday, kid’s school day and your whole life blur together in the same marathon-from-one-chair-at-the-kitchen-table, without boundaries between or true outlets to step back for perspective or processing. So, instead of our pent-up angst leaking out to contaminate other things, or exploding unproductively when we, that overfilled water balloon gets squeezed-just-so, let’s get ahead of it…

As a leader, you have stakes in this. 

The once-normed era of the autocratic, “it’s not personal” approach is actually ending (finally!), and leaders who are not able to meet people where they are as sensitive humans in it with them as a real, flawed humans themselves, are quickly being seen either as the new flavor of monster-boss, disingenuous, or just plain out of touch. Brene Brown’s 10 year study (Dare to Lead) of multinational leaders indicates that those who will lead us into the next frontier are leaders who can demonstrate the skill of courageous leadership by owning and developing tools to reckon with vulnerability as a real thing. And research keeps showing us that creating psychologically safe spaces for people to take risks and trust (not necessarily about discussing emotions all the time, but safe to show vulnerability, fault, etc.) determines a team’s capacity for innovation more than any other factor. That’s got to get led by YOU. So…

HERE’S WHAT TO DO: 

Call out reality.

There’s nothing more unsettling than someone in the midst of a crisis who’s acting as if everything is just fine. We can get honest about what’s going on without sinking into an abyss; in fact there’s huge power in doing so. What we ignore or keep hidden tends to hold more emotional power over us; what we can see clearly, own and make concrete– gets depowered. So call out what is, helping your team to own it, too, so you can intentionally (vs. reactively) choose next steps… 

So yes, we’re still in the pressure cooker (+ all crises parts listed above) – it’s all of us, it’s taking a tremendous toll, and that’s real. If you haven’t lost loved ones, you know someone who has. If you haven’t lost security in employment, finances or basic needs, you’ve thought about it, and likely know someone who has… and each of those needs its own process to heal from. Yet we can’t begin the healing until it’s over and we’re through to the other side, and it’s taking… way…too… long... to get there. This is affecting people’s work, concentration, and ability to be creative/productive, while the trains must keep running. This is easily the hardest challenge we’ve ever lived through, and while we’re overcoming alot and growing resilience through it, it’s rough. 

So… say all of that ^ out loud to your team, make eye contact, and then just take some deep breaths together. Let people share “What I feel like saying is…” (a recent round of that with a team of execs went an hour long, and they thanked me afterward). You don’t have to have a solution for it. Just calling it out is a tremendous relief for people; it will normalizes what they’re feeling as okay.

Notice what’s missing

Outside of the folks in our safebubbles, notice that our cues are gone. We’ve used nonverbals to communicate and understand others, all day long, for our entire lives. A single facial expression or change in posture can say enough to create alignment, flag an issue, offer support, redirect effort, build rapport, alert disapproval, or forge trust. We normally use those cues to gague where we are, and how we’re doing with one another. Yet working/learning/teaching/coaching in person with masks, we’re stripped of those facial cues to rely on or calibrate ourselves with right now. On the flip side, working remotely, seeing only (sometimes glitchy) faces on screen without context of the other nonverbals (posture, movement, actual eye contact, physical energy), we spend a lot of energy guessing, trying to interpret clipped and controlled segments of face-only time, while also distracted by our own faces onscreen, others’ faces, how long we’ve been looking at that screen. So…. 

Use Your Words

Overindex on verbal communication… for good things, tough things, and things you assume you shouldn’t need to say out loud. What once were a thousand quick, communicative looks across the room as you worked in parallel, the connective tissue of your collaboration– now needs to take verbal form to be known. “Hey- we’re crushing this right now- glad you’re here.” (or whatever that look would’ve communicated)

We are meaning-makers. We fill in the blanks for what isn’t said, and whether people go positive or negative in those created stories depends on a lot of things you can’t see (their internal narrative style, confidence in what they’re doing/relationship with you, how much sleep they got last night, what someone else just texted to them 5 minutes ago, etc.). 

So… say more than you think you need to. Articulate what you think they’d otherwise just “get” from you, including what you assume doesn’t need to be said… and know that you’ve given them one less thing to spin about in their heads. You’ll all spend far less time/energy trying to guess at where everyone else’s heads are, so you can accelerate forward.

New Muscles, New Tool of 2-In, 2-Out:

Everyone has their own “stuff” going on, and it’s hard to just check all of it at the invisible door of the virtual meeting. Yet our vocabulary around “how we’re doing” is limited. It’s easy to get caught in the “I’m okay” non-answer cycle, which is unhelpful, plus doesn’t give any actual data for you to go on. So… instead of asking the same “how is everyone?” question, try a new tool, also helping build the muscle of tuning in to others with more specificity… 

Start meetings with each person sharing 2 words to capture where they are coming in to it, then end it with each sharing 2 more to capture where they are coming out of the meeting.

In just seconds, people own and articulate where they are, plus the team gets a quick read of everyone else... both crucially helpful (yet otherwise hard) right now. The simple sharing of those 2-words-in, 2-words-out creates instant investment by the sharer (you’ll see more engagement the rest of the meeting from them), plus a little emotional release+connection with that moment of being authentically heard and seen by others. This builds empathy and emotional fluency on the team, which leads to more creativity, trust, and productivity. 

It also gently requires us to actually tune in to ourselves, and pinpoint/name where we are– that’s the great muscle-building part. “Feelings” have that name because we literally feel them in our bodies first, usually long before our minds can catch up, label them, and decide what to do with them. The more we can name where we specifically are, the faster we can complete the stress cycle they’re a part of, and move through them. 
Listen carefully and with eye contact as folks share their words… it’s a moment to hold space for people to be /share where they are without judgment, and have that be enough.

The more we build these muscles, the more self-aware and other-aware we become, and the smoother/faster we can move through it all. 

Read the room differently

This might sound crazy, yet… If you’re working (or teaching) in person with folks, do one single Zoom call, so you can see people’s faces while they’re actually speaking naturally. During, build some visual-auditory-kinesthetic memory of them to carry back into your masked interactions. It helps. Then, when you do things like 2-in-2-out, you can get the whole picture of where someone is, building empathy. Your visual, auditory and kinesthetic experience of someone can finally come together!

Boundaries for a reason 

In normal times, we have natural boundaries and transitions between modes of operation, roles we play, and parts of our lives. Our brains work fastest with a clean ending to one thing, then a clean beginning to what’s next. Those multiple, few-minute walks you’d typically do between in-person meetings created those clean transitions all day, like onramps and offramps, allowing your brain to let go of focus on one thing, then shift and reset mentally, physically and emotionally before the next– the recovery before the next sprint. Your commute to and from work did the same for the parts of your life– it framed clean transitions and needed decompression for our attention, our energy and our roles. 

So… create new transitions and boundaries. Time box your focus during the day, making focus sprints shorter than you think. Leave 5 minute breaks between things, and during each…. Get up to walk outside, change your visual focus (screenbreak) and reset your state. Your energy will increase, and your nerves will smooth out. 

Pick and choose control 

Our core drive of autonomy manifests as our ability to choose– our actions, our decisions, our next moves. That drive has been confined repeatedly in 2020’s relentless restrictions, so we’ve all got some pent-up autonomy to get out. Taking control can be a very productive thing, especially when it can feed your energy. Rather than feeling like more to do, any of these will actually spark generative energy, because your autonomy drive to choose it yourself will be back ON. 

Physically initiate something. Take physical control in areas that both make you happy yet also add positive energy to the world and others… like ninja-clean your space, rearrange a room, start that exercise thing you keep putting off (or take it up a notch to hit a new goal, if you’ve already started). That kinesthetic energy spent helps move emotions through their cycle, plus lets you feel/see some control over something!

Make something. Take photos, write something, make art, cook something, grow something.

Learn something. Start a new book, take on a new skill, expand thinking into a new topic. 

After any of these, your tolerance and patience for everything else will increase. 

Get a Pro 

Having someone outside your head to hear you, bring perspective, and help you work your thoughts, emotions, pain and frustration is indispensable… especially right now. Coaches and therapists are pros with concrete tools, processes and ability to help sort through what’s brewing in your water balloon. If you have one, talk to them more often than you think you need to, and if you don’t, yet have considered getting a pro like this in your corner… now is the time. Let’s chat!

Mind Your Energy

Stamina is about energy allocation over time. The amount of energy that we’re using daily on things that just weren’t even things a year ago is staggering… reinventing what/how we do everything, constant risk assessment of safety to do X or go to Y all day long is now constant. It’s a lot of energy we didn’t have to tax ourselves with before, and there’s a reason we’re exhausted… our surge capacity is depleted (Susan Haelle’s pivotal explanation is perfect). Just like an athlete needs to be in peak shape during their most high-pressure game season, you need to be in peak shape energetically right now.

Pay attention to the energy you’re letting in and the energy you’re putting out. Because you’re in closer proximity to people right now for longer periods of time, this is key. It’s okay to choose not to absorb energy if it’s not helpful for you. Give yourself breaks from other people’s energy, and do intentional state changes to reset, reframe and recharge. 

Meanwhile, in a more macro and disciplined way, take care right now to feed your energy. State is where you are mentally + emotionally + physically– all 3 all the time. Yet pay close attention to each kind of energy’s capacity, too. We’re built to sprint and recover, sprint and recover, not  sprint a marathon’s distance, like we’re doing right now by default. 

Pick 1 thing for each, and work them into your daily routine, to keep your energy where you want it. My dailies are: Emotional = journaling, Physical= exercise outside, look at the sky 5 min +1 gallon of water, Mental= reading every morning (from a book, not a screen).

Handle with care.

Every person we know has experienced the surreal, ongoing test that 2020 was (and continues to be into 2021), yet what that actually means is different for us each. That matters- because while some of it is universal and collective, our individual experience of it is very personal; it’s all around us, and many folks will only fully process it all in years to come. So approach with care, and hold empathy for that other full water balloon as you make contact.

So… this is DO-able. We can stay fueled and aware in all the ways we need to be responsive, resourceful, and in an intentionally healthy place for ourselves and others– ready for what comes, our balloon mindfully filled, yet pliable… especially right now. 

Uncharted… This moment in Change

The word of the day has changed. It was unprecedented for weeks, yet now… uncharted.

In witnessing the horrific murder of George Floyd, on the immediate heels of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and too many others… humanity’s threshold for Black inequality and systemic injustice crossed its tipping point.

Philonise Floyd (George’s brother) said, in addressing congress, “If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, I think it has… then he died as he lived.”

This many people spanning every state in the U.S. and countries around the world, speaking up and acting in unison, taking on their communities to demand and create racial equality... has never happened before in our history.

This many businesses and organizations of every kind/size, taking a stand to support BlackLivesMatter, publicly committing to being a force for change in structure, policy and influence… is a first.

This is a painful time, our social structures and contracts are being perturbated, and there’s nothing comfortable about it. Yet it’s also awe-inspiring; by every measure we are closer than we've ever been to being able to truly rebuild to equality … yet it's uncharted.

There isn’t a map for us here. Whether you’ve thought of it this way or not, this is a critical moment for you. Whether you intend to or not, you’re playing a role in it. Speaking up is a role. Not speaking up is a role. Listening to understand and find new empathy is a role. Getting defensive is a role. Sharing your raw process is a role. Hiding it is a role. We are outside our comfort zones in a new way, yet again. Now, in these last few weeks, the comfort zones of our worldview and role in humanity have been busted, and it’s pushing us to self-examine in a way we didn’t choose.

There are so many emotions and layers to the shift that's begun, the work there is to do, and the natural confront-or-avoid response it's stirring in us all, publicly and personally. And we don’t get to compartmentalize it.

The natural and physical boundaries we normally heed (and our brains actually count on) between work life and home life, personal self vs. professional self, issues of the world vs. work were already quashed a few weeks into the pandemic (which, among other things-Corona, pushed us to the edges of our coping strategies). And now, being confronted with our humanity, unconscious biases and identity... is appropriately everywhere. Where we once could expertly compartmentalize, we can’t now, and expectations of us even doing so have changed, too; wherever you are in your own process with what’s happening in the world and the shift to dismantle racism and systemic inequality, it matters to people around you, because it informs their process and existence, too. Whether you were ready or not for a forced reflection to really own your self-awareness and possible role in it all, here you are, anyhow, uncharted.

That’s Comfort Zone, busted in yet another way. It's also how we will grow through this. And you will…

We want to do something, so we can feel better as fast as possible. Yet, while individual shift and the process can begin faster than we think, healing and true systemic change will take a while. Especially here in the US, there's so much dismantling, listening in layers and owning-it for White Americans to do... so healing can even begin for Black Americans, and rebuilding a society from equality can happen from a place of integrity for everyone. 

For Black Lives Matter to be a commitment vs. a phase, it requires process, vulnerability, trust, empathy and stamina from every single one of us. You, your teammates, your neighbors and your family, might each be in a different place. It’s more to process (atop pandemic stress and lengthening of life/work from home) than any of us are used to, or have tools to navigate, uncharted. So while there isn’t a map, this is where we each lean in to listen, to learn, to challenge ourselves, to find the words, and to understand in layers.

So… as a leader, where are you in it? What will it mean for you in growth? 

For me as an individual, I’m looking at my own role and process. Out of college I chose to become a public high school teacher on the south side of Chicago, because I wanted to make a difference where it was needed most. Inspired and forever changed by the book Savage Inequalities, (and its author, Jonathan Kozol, who quickly became my idol), I was committed to change the system for the better, and bring a different way of teaching to kids (and communities) who had been written off by economic, educational and racial inequality, separation and segregation. While we didn’t use the phrase Black Lives Matter at the time, its essence is what took me to Chicago, and fueled me and my work every day there for a decade. I worked to understand, to change things for kids (then ultimately teachers, and the education system) there, and open possibility in mindset and opportunity. In that pocket of the world, it changed things in many ways. To date, it’s the work I’m most proud of, and has most shaped who I am and what I believe about what’s possible.  

Yet here I am now, years later, looking at myself. That work on the south side elevated and made the experience and process of education better inside that redlined area, but it didn’t change the “red lines” from existing. Hmm. In my present life, what am I actively doing to intentionally take on or change systemic inequality right here, right now? Have I worked to dismantle institutional bias and inequality around me here, where I know it exists? While I'm vocal when I see racial injustice or intolerance, have I gone after its systemic roots? Have I asked my Black family and friends what it feels like for them every day in this White-biased society, or listened to really understand, let alone listen in the layers and layers it’ll actually take for me to even begin to understand? Have I really considered that, despite my conscious intention, I have biases I can’t even see, and contribute to racism? And the biggest question that weighs on me right now… why did it take this horrific perfect storm we’ve seen in these last weeks for me to be asking those questions of myself and see this gap? There’s no good answer. So…

The 2nd circle of reality I’m creating is this: I am taking this all as a wake-up call for myself. I have an important role as a human to help fix racial injustice and inequality, and as a leader, coach + educator, that role is even more important, right now and right here. I’m in. So right now, I’m reading, I’m watching with new eyes, I’m asking and listening in a way I haven’t before (to understand first, not to fix yet, which is hard), and beginning to start those layers of understanding as an ally. I’m seeing and owning a new facet every day of the bias woven into the structure of my own privileged life, of the lives that others are living right beside me which are not the same, of what I’ve missed. 

This is step one. It’s sobering. And what will lead to being able to be part of the actual change in areas that will best be able to use my help.

How about you? Call it, own it, and let’s do the work.

Meanwhile, the specific tools I share with you in TapIntoGreatness (every chapter is a tool), my TTG Programs and coaching... all apply to your world every day , and absolutely apply right now, too, as you and the people you touch navigate this growth zone and choose how you want to make impact.

Through it all, you have important options and power in the way you can manage and choose your energy, perspective and connection with others, which will shape everything else that happens. The way you can call out what’s actually happening, the way you choose who you’re BE-ing in the process will set both the tone and the bar for everyone around you. The way you can tap into honest, human greatness for your team will influence their experience and their reality… in your work, your team, and your community… yet absolutely in the history we’re making right now.  Although it’s uncharted, change for/to equality is possible. You have more influence than you think, more possibility than you know in it.

I’m with you, I’m committed to your success, and I’m here to help you work through your process as a leader and as a human. Just say the word. 

In my religion, when someone dies we say, “May their memory be for a blessing.” May it be so for George Floyd, and for each of the sacred Black lives needlessly taken. And also… may their memory be for a change.

That thing you keep calling reality…

What if you could get yourself unstuck when you’re spinning negatively in your head? What if you could reframe any moment of upset almost instantly? Actually, you can do both.

Right now, there’s a complex, lightning-fast little process happening in your mind all the time, responsible for all of your decisions, your happiness or misery, and your confidence, too. Most of the time, we’re unaware of it. But right now, we're going to get it…

First, a reality check. That thing you refer to mentally or verbally as “the reality" of a situation, often isn’t (the reality). What??? Not to worry– this may turn out to be the best news you’ve gotten in a long time. 

You already know that you're not the only one with a little voice in your head, right? That voice can propel you forward or shut you down, and so much in between. Yet, most of the time, it’s doing something much less dramatic– silently piloting you through the hundreds of micro-decisions you make in a day… from conversation to thought to action to reaction. That voice interprets the world to you, to which you respond with action. That works pretty well, except when that interpretation is off, because you're actually a bit skewed, and you don't even realize it. While I am a big fan of trusting one's gut and the true art of honing your intuition, there are also times when your “gut” confuses things, and actually mightbe flat-out wrong. 

Quick, real-life example:  

In most instances (especially interacting with other people), we’d usually just think of those 2 circles above as links in a chain of incident-and-meaning timeline to explain the reality of how things are. Yet occasionally, new information comes in, and happily busts the reality we’re operating under. In this case, I heard from that colleague more than a month later, in which they gave me an AWESOME cover quote for my book, and apologized for being so delayed, as they were out of the country that whole time on holiday. "Reality" busted! (in a really good way) 

Sometimes we need to pause our reactive minds before assigning meaning to things, especially when we're going negative or self-critical (the times we're most prone to skew the meaning we assign).

Welcome to what I call Circles of Reality. It's a constant dynamic in our heads, officially called the perception process, and has been studied by social scientists for decades, who refer to these two things as first order reality vs. second order reality. In our time on it here, this is a tool which is going to save you hours of energy, otherwise wasted...

In any moment, here’s what’s actually happening: 

Makes sense that these circles collapse into what we consider "reality"... yet it's got issues.

Simply put, Circle #1 is objectively, physically observable facts... what happened. Circle #2 is constructed in our minds, the meaning we create/assign to what happened. Usually this works out great:

Circle #1: I'm in a meeting with colleagues and superiors, and a colleague asks if I can, spontaneously, present a full pitch of a new idea I quickly mentioned to him earlier that day. 

Circle #2: I take this as a huge vote of confidence from my colleague, creating an opportunity for me to show my work. (so I do, and crush it)

You can see how that would've gone very differently if my circle #2 was different, like: I take this as a intentional setup from my colleague to fluster me; to make me look both bad and unprepared in front of the team. 

Sometimes it’s benign, and we don't even notice... 

Circle #1:  someone cuts you off while you're driving on the highway

Circle #2: you instantly conclude “That person’s a complete idiot!” (and are retriggered in annoyance/anger every time you get near them in the rest of your 20 minute commute). 

Hmm.. is that person actually an idiot? Similarly, was that admired author really avoiding me because of my writing?  Nope. In both cases, that’s just our mind, creating stories of meaning, and allowing them to collapse into what we then hold as “reality.” Not good. So…

Take Control of Your Reality

99% of the upsets I coach clients through have to do with these circles collapsing into sometime unproductive. The first step is to separate the circles apart. 

To best get the power of this, think right now, of something in your immediate world/interactions, that’s occurred or is bugging you (any moment ranging from irritated/judging to full-on shutting down/acting out). Let’s deconstruct it.

Grab something to write on/with for this. That’s actually critical, because it will get your thoughts into concrete visual form, where they’re much easier to work with and pin down than just swirling about in your mind, where they're slippery. Next…

Draw two circles.  Then: 

1. Label the 1st circle with what actually occurred (no interpretation- just behavioral, fly-on-the-wall reporting of occurrence).

2. Label the 2nd circle with what you’ve made it mean, getting all of the story you’ve created in your head out onto that circle.

Now that those circles are separated, consider: 

Which circle causes the most drama, upset, and concern? 

Answer: Circle #2. 

Which circle do we have the most control over? 

Answer: Circle #2. 

Hmm. So the one that’s causing the most upset is also the one we actually can control? Yep. Hence the conflicting complexity yet beauty of being human. This is what separates us from other species on the planet- our ability to interpret, discern, make meaning, and choose our perception in this way. Why?

Because Circle #2 is your story. You made it up based on our internal operating system (our filter) and the narration of that little voice in our head. Yet, no matter how much justification for that meaning/story of Circle #2, you don’t actually know it to be fact (otherwise it would be in Circle #1). Stories are powerful, and as soon as we create them, we tend to believe them, trust them (“trusting one’s gut”), and expand them, swelling that 2nd circle to be much bigger and more powerful than the 1st circle. Then, as those circles collapse together in our working memory of the event, we seal our operating “reality.” 

Yet actually...  it’s really mostly story. Alternate stories could be equally plausible, causing you to see things completely differently, yet we usually don’t go there. We stick with the most compelling, most emotional story, because it's usually strongest (emotions usually win the influence game in our heads).

The power of gaining perspective really comes down to being able to step outside yourself, gain a bit of distance or vantage point, and see the picture differently. When you’re in that 2nd circle of negativity, you don’t even see it, because you have no perspective on yourself or the skewed reality you’re allowing to derail or upset you. 

So now, you can manually get perspective, and interrupt that pattern… 

3. Now draw a 3rd circle. Ask yourself, “What’s another story I could make up about what this means?” Write that interpretation in the 3rd circle.

4. Draw a 4th circle. Ask yourself “What’s a completely opposite story/meaning than the ones I have so far?” Even if it seems ridiculously farfetched, write that story in the 4th circle. If needed, draw a 5th, 6th, etc. circle to get all of the meanings you're making in your mind OUT, and get to one that's healthy.

The key here is perspective- it's not about spinning it into something positive or giving in to those worst-case-scenario fears in your head... get ALL of those out into alternate circles, plus a few less dramatic versions in between, so you can see them all in perspective, and choose one. 

Keep reminding yourself that you don’t know (like with objective, concrete, observable proof) that any of these stories are the truth, so they’re all plausible. Even the ridiculous ones. 

Create concrete alternate circles/stories until you feel a positive shift; that’s your perception of the  situation actually changing. The magic of perspective: With each alternate story you create, the original upset and attachment you had to that 2nd circle (which was controlling you a few minutes ago) starts to lessen a bit. 

Sometimes you'll only need to get to the 3rd circle for that shift, sometimes it could take 10 circles (my personal record), which is fine. 

5. Finally, look at all of the circles of story you’ve come up with, and ask yourself, “Since I don’t know any of these to be truth, what’s the healthiest version of this for me to hold as my operating reality?” And pick a healthy circle to make your new operating reality. If that seems overly simplistic, remind yourself that the story you're holding onto as "true" is also made up. 

Get better at reality. 

This is one of the most powerful tools I coach, because it’s such a straightforward reframe, works so fast, and you could practice it in real time 20 times per day if you wanted to. The more you separate your circles apart, the less reactive you become. 

Consider your upsets and expectations in play too, which feed and color our Circles of Reality; when expectations aren’t met, it kicks off a new Circle #1 incident, and then Circle #2 is all about the judgment/disappointment between what we expected and what actually happened, right? Here’s a piece to think about (and even share with your team) about that. Check yourself there. 

Advanced version: 

• Notice the filters you tend to have on your second circle… Optimistic? Pessimistic? Different when person X is involved? Own that, and watch out for it in your 2nd circles.

• Catch yourself and call it out to your team when your 2nd circle goes negative or counter-productive. Debunk a negative 2nd circle story and come up with a new story, right there in front of them, which is more productive and positive. Modeling!

• Dig deeper: If you’re using circles of reality, then there’s an upset you’re trying to reframe or dislodge. While you made that 2nd circle meaning in nanoseconds, it also got triggered in the first place by something possibly underneath it, which you need to reveal for maximum clarity and quick moving on.

Other people’s reality: 

In using Circles of Reality on someone else (they’re upset, you want to help them to see it another way)… please watch out. Most of us, with great intentions to lead or help, do something like say “Oh no- that’s not what this really means! Look at it this way instead…” and we tell them a 3rd circle. That usually doesn’t work. We’ve all had someone do that to us when we were upset, and thought, “Yeah- you don’t get it. Easy for you to say…” So, no matter how clear it looks to you (of course it does- you're not stuck in that circle like they are!), or how much better your interpretation is, you giving them an alternate 2nd circle just won’t work, because you’re trying to force a perspective shift from the outside-in, which isn’t how our brains are wired. For shift to work, it has to be them stepping outside of their own story to create a new one (that's how a-ha moments happen... in our own heads). Your role? Facilitator, question-asker, possibility-holder. Don’t be daunted by them pushing back on the idea of another interpretation- that’s their emotion about that story (which they’re attached to) in the mix. Remind them that it's all fiction anyhow, so they have more options than they think here... Stay with it. Get all of the “what I could make it mean” answers up on and out, so they’re visible and concrete. Then ask the golden question (#5 above)… “what’s the healthiest, most productive meaning to hold as y/our operating reality?” THEN have them CHOOSE IT.

---

For this, as with most tools I bring to you, it’s about getting perspective or distance from the emotional/mental traffic jam you’re in at the moment, stepping back from it, seeing whatever insight/pattern/layering is there in your own behavior (the essence of self-awareness), and then making a new call of where you want to go from a place of choice vs. reaction. You’ve got this! 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2018

It's Okay- You're Actually Turning Into a Diamond

Team Under Pressure?

Disruption creates shift. Shift taken to a transformative, cellular level is different than a temporary “flavor of the month” change (which we all know doesn’t stick).  Consider the transformation of carbon in the earth into a diamond…. Now we get a picture of what true, permanent change to a stronger, different thing altogether really looks and feels like. You’re building a team to create that kind of change, right?  Chemist Ilya Prigogine won a Nobel Prize for capturing the irreversible process of transformation in nature, and it actually has everything to do with your disruptive team, causing and experiencing it every day. 

Prigogine looked first at the idea of Entropy-what happens when we leave something alone (opposite of your disruption) for long enough. He was looking at chemical reactions, but this applies human beings and teams, too. Entropy happens… left alone, things fall apart or scatter….

Leave a log alone in the woods for long enough, and it decomposes. 

Leave a person alone long enough (like solitary confinement), and they go crazy.

Leave a group alone for long enough, and it either splinters or it becomes Lord of the Flies.  

Prigogine also looked at the opposite; what happens when you add pressure or energy to something to disrupt it- perturbation.  As Perturbations happens to a system (or person or team), it can only hold so much pressure/energy, before something’s got to give, hitting a point of critical mass. This occurs in physics, and it applies to human development and group dynamics as well. 

When pressure continues or increases to its capacity, the heat rises, (temperature in physics and in a room of perturbed people) and things start to vibrate and shift. 

A log under the pressure of a fallen boulder, for long enough… will start to off-gas.  

An individual under increased pressure from a situation… might bail out of the situation. 

A team with increased pressure on it… might lose some people. 

In each of these^, that pressure increases, hits a threshold in it’s current form, and then… 

Everything transforms. Literally. Pushes through the heat of that threshold to transform into a stronger, more stable structure (which can withstand more pressure). 

The wood transforms into coal.. 

We’ve commonly thought that coal under sustained pressure over time transforms into a diamond. (fun fact: diamonds actually form out of similar form of carbon as coal, yet not coal itself)

Championship teams often become so in playoff situations, as they push through to that elite version of themselves.

Individuals pushed with enough pressure of challenge will also transform into new versions of themselves, which is the ultimate learning (can sound like "I'm just different now than before- I can't go back").  

And none of these, just like you, just like your team... will go back to their original form. 

You, your organization and your team will go through this. It is simply how transformative change occurs. You’ll know it’s happening when it gets hot with conflict on the team- metaphorically, yet also the temperature of the individuals and in the room literally goes up when the pressure of those dynamics rises. This can happen when they’ve been wrestling through an idea or process in search of a breakthrough, and have been at it a long time. It can happen when they’re being challenged by an outside force of pressure or time running out, and have to pull out a solution they haven’t discovered yet. It can happen through reorgs or major changes in leadership or the industry. You’ll see it in the organization as people bristle at, go into denial about, or push back against disruption that's brought (by change? maybe even by you?).  In these situations, they’re being perturbed, and that's really uncomfortable. If they can stand in the discomfort of that heat, they can push through the threshold of their own thinking and challenge to transformative, real change. 

Context holds the team.

For teams going through perturbation, this is where you come in as a leader. The way you hold and facilitate those dynamics makes all the difference in your team either being able to push through to transformative change or not. 

Teams either stay together through that perturbation or they don’t, depending on the agreements, trust and commitment they have in place with one another. In looking at any team that thrives through pressure (sports teams, partnerships, organizations), more and more research is showing up to define them from the rest. Key ingredients come down to psychological safety and dependability. Those are huge, so make sure you’ve got the context set…

Agreed-upon values, process, mission and commitment allow people to trust and weather the storm of change. Solid agreements about behavior and what people can count on, hold them all together when things get rough, and become the “true north” on the team’s internal compass, to which they can reset with one another and recalibrate.  These agreements keep everyone’s energy and reflexes in check under pressure, redirecting the players back to one another and the commitment they’ve made.  Examples:

“Never leave a teammate alone,” 

“Work through upset on the team directly, immediately and out of the public eye,”

Agreements like these call the team back to one another, build solidarity, and allow them to stand in the heat all the way through to the other side. If you don’t have those in place, pause your team, pull together and set it up…

• Create a context of unconditional agreements early in the team’s process, before they’re in the heat of the pressure. Help them clarify and articulate what they need to be able to count on without question from others in order to be all in, and create agreements to ensure and protect those things.

• Ask “What gets in the way of you being able to do your absolute best work on a team,” then create agreements to proactively guard against those.

Perspective holds you.

If it's you being perturbed, keep focusing on what's on the other side. There's power in picturing that wood turning into coal, that coal turning into a diamond, knowing that you're in the heat, but what you're going through is leading to a stronger, more structurally stable version of you, on the other side. 

You've got this. You're almost there, diamond!

---

This piece is adapted from Sarah's chapter on team dynamics in the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate. Here's a link directly to that chapter, Your Team of Dynamics and the Dynamics of your Team, where you'll get even more perspective on leading a team through change. 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2016

Power & Off-Ramps

The simple on/off ramps connecting the highway to the rest of the world are things we take for granted, yet clutch.

My office is attached to my home, which is good and bad.  The very thing that makes it  really great and really hard is the distance between work and the rest of my life (family, home, etc). It's about 3 inches- the thickness of the door to my office.

Within the worlds we work and lead every day, we have a certain amount of momentum, speed and influence.

Relatively speaking, people listen to us, respond to us quickly (again- all relative), and look to us for direction and leadership when we enter a room or conversation.  All of that gives us a sense of, well... POWER.  The more effective we are in our work, the more we get it.  The more we get it, the more it gives us energy and motivation. Which conditions and fuels us to keep that momentum, even accelerating.

This is an important thing to acknowledge, because it feeds us more than we know all day, every day in that world.  While we have pressure and responsibility with leadership, it’s tempered by that rush we get from the impact, intensity, pace and immediate feedback of influence from our decisions and actions.

In many ways, as we go along in this work-world, it’s as if we’re going 70 mph on a highway, with momentum.  Our peers are going at that same pace with similar direction, acceleration and power, and it’s all flowing consistently. Like that highway, sometimes we don't even realize how fast we're moving, until...

At the end of the day or the week, we enter a different world- NOT work.

Relative to that world of work, this is like driving on sidestreets, where it's a completely different way to navigate with many others who are on very different paths, going different ways, at different speeds. Pedestrians, cyclists, cars turning right in front of us. Definitely not the place to go 70 mph, focusing full steam ahead.

There’s a REASON for offramps.  

What would happen if the offramp from the highway to the side street you just traveled was only 3 inches long?  Ridiculous, right? We'd wrecklessly careen into that other world, and potentially cause all sorts of damage coming into it at highway speed, yes?  Well, perhaps that's exactly what's happening.

In my case, when I'm not traveling or at a team's site for work, my transition from one world to another is only 3 inches long, from one side of the door to the other. While I have another door which goes to the outside, I instead use the one which exits straight back into the busiest part of my family's world. Bam- right from the highway, going 70 mph into the 4-way intersection of cars- some stopped, others going different directions at different times and speeds, with pedestrians mixed in. No offramp. Unsurprisingly, that transition is often jarring for at least someone in the mix (sometimes me, sometimes others, innocently doing their pedestrian thing as they should).

My office setup makes the challenge very visible. Yours may be less obvious, but it's there. Have you used your entire commute home on business calls, then walked into your house (even past a family member) still on a call?  Have you brought your laptop and work right into the the middle of everything non-work? Do you tell your friends and family, "just give me one more minute" while you disappear into email or texting to get one more thing handled, missing what's happening right in front of you?

Many of us come off of our workday or flow into the world of our families and personal relationships without creating, using or acknowledging an offramp.  It’s as if we speed off the highway without that important strip to slow us down, still going 70 mph, then get irritated with everyone else going half that pace because they’re not moving with the flow we're used to and still expecting.

That power, pace and flow of decision that exists for us in the world of work and leadership doesn’t exist in the same way in the rest of our lives. In fact, many of us have experienced people in our personal lives reacting much the same way any innocent drivers on a side street, going along at 25mph would react to someone plowing through at 70mph- “knock it off!”

We’ve all had someone in our personal lives remind us that we’re not their coach or leader or boss, yes?

We've gotten more impatient with our loved ones or kids when they don't listen and respond to us with the way we think they should, yes?

We’ve all gotten irritated and impatient with someone’s (slow) response time outside of work, yes?

Many people I coach tell of their personal relationships suffering at the cost of this.  They were still going at 70mph and missed the things happening at 25mph (like people in their lives finding their own paths, disconnecting, etc.).  Spouses, family, friends. . .

I'm finding that the more I pay attention to my transitions on and off that freeway of my workworld, the more present I'm able to be in ALL the moments-  with my family, with my clients and work, with my projects and in the precious moments of just being by myself.

At the end of the day, sometimes this means creating my own off ramp, since there isn't one built in for me. This might mean driving the long way home to finish the call and give myself a few minutes with the windows down and music up to clear my head before I pull into the driveway. Taking the back door out of my office to take a transition walk all the way around the house to come in the way everyone else does. Turning the computer off and leaving it off.  Leaving my phone on my desk instead of having it attached to me all the time. Getting outside with my kids to play what they're playing.  Turning off all the devices and just talking and connecting with my husband without distraction at the end of the day.

So, where’s your offramp?  

Do you have one?  Do you use it?  Does it cause you to slow down, enter into a different speed and traffic pattern as those around you and pay attention? What happens when you don't?

Create new and deliberate ones. Here's a start:

• Consciously think about the role you just came out of (like "boss") and choose which you're transitioning into (like "partner"). Get yourself in that mindset...how does a partner show up differently than a boss?
• Finish the call, the email, the other-focus, and give yourself a distinct buffer of time and state change before you walk into that other world.
• Give yourself a ritual to mentally, emotionally and physically clear your head of one world and transition into the other (like taking the last 5 minutes of your drive home to be off the phone, listening to your favorite song, loud).
• Create clean lines. Declare "done for the day" to yourself and everyone else who's impacted by it, and do what's necessary to stick to that (computer off, phone in bag, etc.).

As lines blur between the speedzones in our lives, check yourself and your ramps. Then notice your navigation improve.

©SarahSinger&Co. 2013

Closer Than They Appear

My mom’s rear-view mirror always had etched onto it:

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

So it turns out that this standard-issue reminder about perception applies to our own psyche, as well.

When we get to the part of my training where I ask people to identify a spot in their lives where they need to step up or out or through something, many people find something BIG.  It’s often having to do with a person they need to confront or a thing they’ve needed to do for a long time, which they’ve been allowing to suck their energy and hold them back in their productivity or happiness for weeks, months or years.  Most people have a few of these things rattling around, sort of like extra weights they’ve been carrying around with them.

So, I help them to stand up to the BIG thing, and commit to busting through it to the elusive “other side” which is alot like those things in the rear-view mirror… much closer than it seems.

It often comes down to a conversation they need to have with someONE or a new behavior that they need to just DO or try.  I coach around it, sometimes even set up full plans of attack for getting their State just right, and all the support they need to hold that State, follow through and not bail at the last second.

In my work with thousands of people who have gone through this very process, I’ve found something in common which takes me back to the rear-view mirror…

Leading up to the actual breakthrough (which is often just a moment), people will actually spend hours of time thinking about it, obsessing about it, rehearsing it or just worrying about it before they actually do it.  The good news is that this is replacing the countless hours of stress, upset, distraction and worry that they had been spending regularly on it before they chose to break through it.

So finally, they get to the moment of truth.

They get into State (or not, which makes it more painful), they DO the big thing, and they’re through to the other side.  The act or conversation took minutes.  It’s over.  The energy suck that had been draining their will and focus is cut off, and there’s a proud mix of adrenaline, relief and newfound energy afterward.  Then the realization…

Obstacles are smaller than they appear.

It wasn’t that big of a deal in hindsight.  All of that worrying and prep, and they broke through it in moments.  To me as a coach, the most important thing is the equation of time spent that comes in the debrief:

Number of sucked hours of worry/upset/stress/energy you are losing in thinking, worrying, avoiding by not doing it

VS.

Moments it takes to just do it and be through to the other side

Simple equation of time investment.

Easy?  Not really, which is where Comfort Zone and coaching like mine come in.

But simple? ABSOLUTELY. For me, this math is what gets me to finally get out of my head and do the uncomfortable but liberating thing.

Maybe we should change what’s etched in our rear-view mirrors as a constant reminder, so we can save all that time and energy, and just step up and out in the first place?

©SarahSinger&Co. 2013

The Power of STATE, Part 1…

Ever fallen asleep while reading in bed?
Your body did that.                                                                                                            

Ever blush when you were trying hard to keep your cool? 
Your emotions did that.

Ever felt sort of sick, but powered through something pretty successfully anyhow?
Your mind did that.

These kinds of things happen to you all the time, right?

Well, they actually happen more than you even realize, and you can use what’s going on there to determine and choose how your moments, interactions and days go rather than just allowing them to happen to you.

It’s called State, and you’re in one right now. 

Not the geographic State like California, but your State as in where you are mentally, emotionally and physically at any given moment.  You could be curious, riveted, bored, excited, tired, irritated, focused, creative, playful… these are all States.

Often people refer to their moods, which is pet peeve of mine, since it implies emotion only, and is actually inaccurate.  There’s a lot more to where you are right now than just emotion, and you can actually manage it more easily than you’d think.

This is one of my favorite topics to coach, and a lot of fun to play with. It’s also one of the most important distinguishing factors between people who are “good” and people who are masters; think Michael Jordan vs. every other b-ball player (still), Peyton Manning vs. every other quarterback. Not only are they masters of their talent, they are also masters of their own State from second to second. Under tremendous pressure, they get and hold themselves perfectly aligned mentally, emotionally AND physically to outperform everyone else. This is key not only for them, but for you too. Why?

Performance is State-dependent.                                                                                   
Learning is State-dependent.                                                                                         
Attention is State-dependent.                                                                                          
Focus is State-dependent.

Whether or not you can perform, learn or focus as you want or need to completely depends on your State.

Here’s the piece people miss, which is the crucial…                                                         
State is always comprised of three interconnected parts:  thoughts (mental), feelings (emotional) and position/action (physical).  These are key, because every time one of these parts shift, the other two shift as well. Every time. 

Change one part, you change them all. Every time.                                               
Think about it…                                                                                                               
You’re working, start to get bored, so get up and walk around for a minute.  You sit back down, and you’re refocused. That’s a physical trigger shifting where you were mentally/emotionally. OR…                                                                                                
You’re tired, but talk yourself into working out anyhow.  You don’t even get winded, have energy that surprises you, and get into a great workout . That’s a mental trigger shifting where you were physically/emotionally.  OR…                                                                  
You’re feeling cranky, tired and distracted, then someone calls or texts who always makes you smile or laugh.  You come away from them on your phone happy, energized, and thinking more clearly. That’s an emotional trigger changing where you were emotionally/mentally/physically.

Every one of those is called a State Change, and you actually have lots of them all day long.

The question is this:  Are they just happening to you or are you choosing them deliberately?

States get triggered by all sorts of things. Situations, conversations, episodes.  Recurring triggers exist all over, too. These are called anchors, or associations to particular States.  Common anchors are certain people (just seeing that one person’s name come up on your email or voicemail list triggers a certain State),                                                                
smells (recently a waiter was a completely thrown by how much my perfume was an anchor to his ex-girlfriend… awkward!),                                                                           
music (that’s why your favorite show doesn’t change it’s theme song- it’s your trigger for an excited, anticipatory State to be ready for tuning in), and                                                 
places (that one spot where you… will always trigger the same memory and corresponding State…).

The mind-body connection has lots of research, and we’ve even come to reference “mind over matter” to explain how we performed despite ourselves or as a tactic to employ when we need to get “in the zone.”  That’s really State we’re referencing, in moments when we’ve deliberately managed it- changed, accessed, set it so well that we could perform beyond the circumstances or what we normally could.  Athletes and entertainers do this all the time pregame or preshow, in order to set themselves for their best performance.  Why not you?

You can learn it…

Master State Management, and you’re on your way to guaranteeing your own performance. 

The best examples to watch are in sports. To me, it’s a great fishbowl where I love to study moments, patterns and techniques of State management and mastery (or not).

Take basketball…                                                                                                                 
The foul shot in basketball is the ultimate test of State.  Technically, it’s the easiest shot there is- straight in front of the basket, nobody interfering, the same every time.  And yet… it’s not the easiest shot, because it’s really a test of being able to set and hold State. This is brilliant, in my opinion. Elite, uber-talented professional basketball players screw up this shot. Some chronically.  Why? Change one, you change them all.  There’s no question of whether they can physically make the shot- of course they can. They have and will nail thousands of foul shots, maybe even with their eyes closed.  Not the point. You put them on the foul line with pressure of the win in jeopardy, slow time down, and then it’s not about physical or technical ability.  It’s about being able to set and hold State.  It’s mental and emotional… and if these aren’t set it automatically, literally handicaps their physical ability in that moment to hit the shot or not. All connected, all the time. 

The difference between you and an NBA star…                                                     
Actually quite a few, right? So, you may not be a professional basketball player, but I’d wager that your performance may actually have more at stake to it than that player on the foul line for one shot in one game. Yours is about performing as a the right leader to your team, creator of the ground-breaking idea, or listener for another human being.  Your State matters.

Think of it as the glue that holds everything else (your talent, your ability, your knowledge) together. If you have those things and you can manage your State well, you’re set.  If you have all that, but can’t hold your State, you’re inconsistent at best.

So- let’s get you some State mastery, yes?                                                                
You can change your own and other people’s States in an instant, and it will make all the difference between good and great, control vs. none over the quality of your experiences and ultimately…what you can generate in your own performance.

I coach to this every day, so if you really want to dive in, let’s chat. Meanwhile, we’ll take a few posts to mess with it and build these critical new muscles for you. This is truly just Part 1.

For now…

•Wake up a new self-awareness… of your State. 

To get more out of your moments and mastery over your State, you have to first be able to call it in the moment. What State are you in right now? Hopefully it’s something like curious, focused, or intrigued as you’re reading this . If it’s not any of those, see if you can give it a name.  “Good” and “bad” don’t cut it for pinpointing a State.  Get more specific, like: Focused, energized, calm, anticipating, inspired, motivated, determined, enthusiastic, excited, curious, open, reflective, peaceful, etc.                                                                    
OR                                                                                                                                   
Doubting, restless, critical, frustrated, annoyed, grouchy, sad, angry, restless, anxious, distracted, defensive, judging…

If you find yourself thinking “I don’t know what State I’m in,” see if one of those listed fits, and your brain will usually work out the right answer from the contrast…  “No- that’s not it, it’s really….!”

•Pay close attention to WHAT, WHO and WHEN your States get triggered or are vulnerable.   

You’ll notice that your State might be a really good one like curious, creative, focused, open… but then it gets messed with by something, which spins you into an unproductive State like stressed, irritated, mad, complacent, crabby, taskmaster, or whatever.

For example, certain people trigger States for you. Who sets yours off every time?  Good or bad?                                                                                                                                      
Or, it could be a certain topic that does it.                                                                           
Or, it could be a certain time of day that does it to you.                                                        
Or it could be situational- like getting feedback.                                                                  
Or, it could be particular people, songs, places or smells that trigger certain States as anchors. Pay attention.

•Find your triggers and use them. 

Anchors for certain States are all around you- good and bad. It takes extra awareness to realize when your State is being triggered, in the moment. Try calling it, then use anchors to your advantage.

Place that stresses you?  Get out of there and avoid it if possible- switch it up.           
Favorite song that fires you up? Listen to it before the big presentation.                           
Shirt that makes you feel invincible?  Wear it for the big meeting.                                     
Scent that calms you? Wear it when you know you’re anxious.                                        
Photo that reminds you of a great/successful/peaceful/connected moment? Get it onto your wall or  phone where you can look at it when you’re off.

There’s a lot more to this. We’re just getting started. This is enough to mess with for a week.

Next time…

Deliberately setting or changing your State- in the moment and strategically.

Getting other people’s states and how to change those, too.

Meanwhile, stay tuned to yourself, and see how quickly you can call out your own State. You’ll be way ahead of most people around you.

NOTE: This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the power of State. Check out 2 & 3 also!

©SarahSinger&Co. 2013

The Upside of Pressure

“With eight seconds left in overtime…” This line and the song that goes with it has been stuck in my head for weeks.  (Over My Head by The Fray)

“Just in time…” is how I recently described my coaching style.  Might even be the title of a new book I’m working on.

"The Art of the Timeout under Pressure" ...a misunderstood and underutilized coaching tool I've been talking with leaders a lot about lately. 

“The Timeteller”...book by Mitch Albom, who I got to see and hear speak the other day, and left thinking about time, our infatuation with it, and its impact.

A pattern here, maybe?  While it’s telling of where my thinking has been, there’s also some bigger learning here to share about time, pressure, and what you’re doing with it.

Of course it came together with a recent coaching client, as I reoriented her to a breakthrough. Currently in between the high-stakes, high-pressure, all-consuming projects she normally leads… this high-performing, rising star of her firm is currently in a period of downtime, and presented with several internal “interesting,” ongoing initiatives within the firm which have been waiting.  While critical and the stuff of which the future of the firm will be built (like groundbreaking new business development), she’s just not fired up about taking it on.  She reached out to me because she’d like to move up to the next level of leadership in the firm, yet is feeling stuck with this current outlay of not-so-exciting initiatives to engage with and wanted direction.

I chuckled to myself at the irony-  a high-performing rising star, eager to move up and forward but wholly unmotivated by all there is to create around her, and unsure how to engage.

So… what happened?

Downtime.That golden time when things slow a bit, and you should theoretically get so much done in all those key areas you otherwise neglect when you’re slammed with other time-sensitive work… right?  These key areas are important; building-the-structure-and-system work, completing-the-growing-ideas work, writing-the-article-to-share-the-success work, mapping-the-course-forward-to-ensure-our-long-term-success work. When we’re slammed with getting deliverables out the door, we fantasize about having space to think about, let alone execute, these fundamentals.

And then… things slow down. The calm arrives. Except all that completion, creation and productivity we envisioned actually doesn’t happen, does it?

When the pressure cooker we’re used to (in which we regularly produce multiplied brilliance within a compressed time) cools off and we have clear space to create, complete, be deliberate and thoughtful… we’re less productive, less motivated and slower.  This happens, right? At least it does for some of us, including my client today.  Why?

Pressure vs not. For some of us, while we might even complain about it, the truth is that we feed on the pressure of… the glorious impending deadline.  Under it, the clock ticks down, pushing the best ideas to the top, the endorphins through our system and the rush of creativity to our thinking. The more we thrive on that pressure- the 11th hour before the presentation to create the very best insights and work and client deadlines to drive our process-  the more we need it to get to that endorphin-firing state of creative productivity.  That pressure keeps us driving, cranking and producing.  Yet it can also become a crutch we’re dependent on in order to produce.

For my rising star coachee, even the desire to excel wasn’t enough to generate the same spark.  I’ve been there, too.  As the pattern emerged today, I pinpointed the most important and deadly word in it all for her (describing the initiatives she had to engage with)- the very word we should all eliminate… ongoing.

Sometimes there’s nothing worse than something that goes on and on and on with no clear end.  It’s like a life sentence- ugh.  Our brains like clean beginnings and clean endings to things, lights at the end of tunnels, and yes… clear finish lines to cross.

Time is finite for a reason- it gives us both perspective and the push to get moving. Tick tock.

Messing with it...                                                                                                               
When we compress time (or someone/thing compresses it for us), performance goes up, because it doesn’t have a choice. Create it now, take your shot, or you lose the moment forever. Tick tock.

Some people naturally feed on this dynamic as fuel- knowing our best work happens under pressure, best ideas right before the deadline… maybe even in not starting until just before deadline, knowing it’ll just come.  Other people may not be inclined this way (and our apologies if you’re teamed with those who are), yet learn to adapt to it and learn how to generate under pressure. Some don’t, and the best thing for them is to identify it early on. I’ve coached many people out of roles, teams and jobs where cadence and pressure-response were just too mismatched in this way- misery for them.

For most, though- when we expand the time allotted, then the work and the process also expand to fill it. The urgency disappears and often the energy right along with it.  I have gone into lethargic, deadened team settings as a coach, simply compressed everyone’s time a bit, and noticed the energy and productivity come alive instantly, because deadlines spur action.

So… create the pressure where you need it.  The magic is when you can create it yourself rather than having to be dependent on (or at the mercy of) life, clients, teammates to put the pressure on. There is a way we need to set ourselves up to get moving and bring it. 

I said to our star…. “Leaders task themselves. They don’t wait until there’s the pressure of an expectant client or challenging leader or deadline- they CREATE them. Often from nothing. Take every “ongoing” initiative that’s been labeled and compress its time- give it a 10-day deadline to get to resolution, concept or deliverable. Then what might happen?”   She paused, then simply said, “Thank you.  That’s all I needed.  I’m on my way.”  She then went on to reset those firm initiatives with real time, tight deadlines, rallied and dove in.

Could it could really be that simple?  Just compress the time for yourself, create a deadline, and work within the constraints you’ve given yourself.                                           
If you’re working on your own, and need the pressure to kick you into gear, you may have tried setting arbitrary deadlines for yourself to get your brain to activate.  If you have amazing self-discipline in this arena, that’s probably working beautifully for you.  You give yourself little deadlines and force yourself to hit them.  And you do.  That’s awesome.  Yet sometimes it’s actually not that straightforward. For many reading this, I’m guessing that the results in the arena of “just set a deadline for yourself” have been inconsistent at best.  It may have worked the first time or so, but then didn’t anymore.  Here’s why…

• Deadlines and the pressure that goes with them have to be real, or they don’t work.  Your brain is too smart for fake deadlines.  It’ll skate out of it and go through its normal evasive pattern of avoidance until it has real pressure to push it into action.  There are a few ways to make it real…

• Get someone else to be accountable to. This could be someone you choose to whom you’ll deliver the finished product to by a certain time- who will hold you to it.  A team is even better. Just knowing that they’re expecting it, planning around it can kick you into gear. They will be your pressure.

• Create an event around it.                                                                                      
Beyond just people expecting something from you, create an actual happening around your deadline, so you’ve got something on which your performance will hinge.  A team meeting, a presentation, even a “let’s meet for coffee so I can show you…”  The impending event is great pressure- you’ll perform.

• Lead.                                                                                                                                  
This brings all of it together. One of my favorite parts of leading is being able to have others able to help execute great ideas. When I told my coachee today that “leaders task themselves” I was serious- leaders task themselves- often along with tasking others, and that’s why it works.  It’s a beautiful thing- an idea is born- you put it out there, and create a deadline for the team/organization to hit.  They’re fired up about the goal, you’re in it with them (to varying degrees), everyone performs and… it gets done.                                    
And if you’ve been paying attention… make that deadline short.

• Most importantly… Keep it in Perspective.                                                               
The one thing none of us want is pressure that goes toxic, and turns into unhealthy overwhelming stress. There’s good and bad stress- and that’s the bad kind.

Sometimes it’s about just getting perspective on it.  Specifically, keep checking your WHY in it all- that’s your reason for doing whatever it is in the first place.  It’s easy to get wrapped up instead with When (as in deadline pressure).  The Why is what gives it all a reason to be- your reason to care in the first place.  Find your Why in what you’re doing until it speaks to you.  Then come back to the When as your trigger to action- to get moving.

So- check your Why, get yourself set up for optimal push, and then…

Tick tock.

©SarahSinger&Co. 2012