Thinking Out Loud!: October 2018

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Reinventing Yourself – 9 NEW Strategies – Part II

Life is not about finding yourself. Trust me on this one, you are right here, just where you left you! Life is mostly about creating yourself, time and time again. We will do this as you progress in life, career, and, accordingly, your leadership progression. As I shared last time, this has me thinking out loud about how we go about doing this.

Pulling heavily from Herminia Ibarra’s great book, Working Identity, making a significant life change often starts with a simple, but incredibly compelling idea, that at some point in our life, we reach a point where we want to be somewhere else. We know we are capable of being and doing more, but we are not sure what to do or how to start. Since I usually finish what I start, I want to share the last 5 of the 9 of her strategies that may help move your forward.

Strategy #5 – Craft Experiments

Try new projects that align with the type of roles and activities associated with a new line of work or leadership approach. This could include side projects, cross-functional committee work temporary roles, volunteer work, pro bono consulting, etc. Then decide if you really liked doing those things. Did they reflect your strengths, values, and skills sets? Did you like the people and culture that are part of the “usual suspects” of this type of work? You have to do enough of this to really get an accurate idea of what the new career role or leadership approach entails.

Strategy #6 – Shift Connections

Speaking of “usual suspects” when you are considering a new career role or shift, it is vital you can around people that do what you think you want to do. You will find them in networking groups, professional associations, conferences, and in on-line communities. This will feel a bit uncomfortable at first since they will not use the same jargon, have different outlooks and mindsets, and have “been there and done that” more than you. This is critical. For my own example, when I was considering a move into freelance consulting, joining the John Maxwell Team was a great “deep dive” into this world. They were definitely not your usual higher education types! Yet, they were a great source of information and guidance on the good, bad, and ugly of becoming a content marketer, performance coach, and solopreneur. I was also fortunate to get connected with great coaches and consultants like Frank Lind and Alan Dobzinski. They were a great source of ideas and guidance, but we also became teaching allies and partners. The same is true when you seek and shift to a new professional/social network. This new “tribe” can and will be a great source of information, “how to’s”, and job opportunities but you have to be open and listen.

Strategy #7 – Value the NOW

Don’t wait for the clouds to part and the heavens to open for the truth of your next role to be revealed. Reinventing yourself as a professional and leader takes a lot more time than you think – 3 – 5 years according to Dr. Ibarra. Use everyday events and situations to inform what you want to be and do. How you interpret events is more important than the events themselves. The point is that if you wait for some obvious moment of truth you may be waiting a long time! Leadership authors Barry Kouzes and Ken Posner share that we experience small moments of truth every day, we just may not recognize them as such. Take advantage of what life sends your way and use those experiences to help evolve into the actual self you want to become.

Strategy #8 – Step Back and Take Inventory

If you are becoming frustrated that your new leadership approach is not working the way you want, or your career shift is not occurring in the manner you would like. Take a short break. A really short break. It’s kind of like that phenomenon that occurs when you are just about to fall asleep then all of a sudden, an answer you have been looking for all day or a sudden insight occurs. Sometimes our brains just need to marinate on a problem. I once heard that our brains cannot really multitask, they simply timeshare! Take a walk, even two, but get back in the game. It is only through actively playing the game that we discover what we are capable of and what we want to do. Also, don’t discount how far you have come or how much you have changed. Trust me, you will be amazed at your progress.

Strategy #9 – Seize Opportunities

Changes and opportunities can come out of nowhere! A job offer or an interview request that you had previously thought was a non-starter shows up. Opportunities come and go but even if it is not “the” one but gets you a step closer, don’t discount it. I have made wonderful connections and have had great interactions with such offers to help, support, etc. Whatever you do, bet on yourself and don’t retreat back to safety. If someone thinks highly enough of your skills and talents, hey, who are you to tell them they are wrong! In fact, I cannot think of any new job I obtained that I was 100% factory equipped to take on that role. You see, when I look for a new role, I always judge it on 1) what I can immediately contribute and 2) what I will learn. Such an approach has kept me from becoming complacent and focused on being a life-long learner.

If any of this has resonated with you, then take some action on it. Create a checklist or strategy journal that contains action steps you can take in the near future that will move you to your next self. It is OK and even advisable to reflect on these strategies, but make sure you calendar specific and actionable steps you can take on each one to be completed no later than 30 days from the date of your reading.

Anytime you are thinking of a significant life change or know you need to “next level” your leadership skills, I recommend a adding a personal board of advisors. Here is who I would invite to be on your board:

- A Sector Mentor who can guide you in the transition with industry-specific content and considerations

- A Career/Leadership Coach who can walk this journey with you and be that confidential sounding board and accountability partner

- A long-time Personal Mentor who has always been there for you throughout your career

- A good but Candid Friend who will speak truth in your life

I would not invite the following:

- The Itty Bitty Crappy Committee that holds meetings in your head and tells you that you cannot do something

- Average People who want you to stay average. In fact, leadership guru John Maxwell shares that you know you are on the right track when average people are trying to talk you out of something!

- CAVE Dwellers = Colleagues Against Virtually Everything, Negative people will always pull you down. They have nothing new to offer except criticism, so you can just invite them to join the competition.

Creating a new and more vibrant self will take hard work. A next level life cannot be achieved by down line efforts. It will be worth it and not just because of what you achieve but what you become in the process!

As always if I can help you and the people you associate with Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I invite you to visit my website below and see if any of the training or coaching experiences I offer can provide an impact.

If you want to know more about leading with intention, I would direct you to Leading Out Loud: Strategies for Raising Your Leadership Voice! available on Amazon.com. I would also be happy to share the full NEXT LEVEL LEADERS training resources with you or your organization or personally coach you through the process. Please feel free to contact me for a no obligation inquiry.

Yours in leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Reinventing Yourself – 9 NEW Strategies – Part I

Any kind of substantial life change, whether it be changing careers or your leadership approach, requires that you change yourself! That is a pretty dramatic statement to make but if you think about it, its truth lies in the fact that what got you here may not be sufficient to get you there!

In my role of training and coaching established leaders and professionals, that is perhaps the toughest hurdle to overcome, mainly because there is no clear road map of how to do so. This has me thinking out loud that whereas I cannot offer guidance on exactly what to do (because each situation is uniquely different), I could share some thoughts of how to at least go about doing it!

Pulling heavily from Herminia Ibarra’s great book, Working Identity, making a significant life change often starts with a simple, but incredibly compelling idea, that at some point in our life, we reach a point where we want to be somewhere else. We know we are capable of being and doing more, but we are not sure what to do or how to start. To hopefully be of service, I will share 9 of her strategies that may help move your forward. In Part I, I will share 4 and finish next time with 5 more.

Strategy #1 – ACT Your Way into Change

Leadership expert John Maxwell often shares it is easier to act your way into a feeling versus waiting until you feel like taking action. The same holds true when you are seeking to change a life path. Start experimenting with new roles, new leadership approaches, etc. and see what you gain from that. Trust me, we are always getting feedback about our work, leadership, ambitions, etc., we just do not always pay much attention to it! If you just focus on thinking about what you want to do or be, you will never create the movement you want since the only feedback mechanism is you. As a great colleague once told me, “just jump in the deep end of the pool!” I am pretty sure he was talking about my dating life versus how to enter a swimming pool!

Strategy #2 – Quit Trying to “Find Yourself”

I get a kick when I hear young people tell me that they want to take a gap year to “find myself”. Seriously, you’re right there! Just look in the mirror and I guarantee you will be the only one looking back at you! Dr. Ibarra proposes that we are comprised of many possible “selves”. We have our professional self, personal self, friend self, etc. As shared above, taking some kind of trial and error actions allows us to differentiate between what we really want versus what we think we want. I can attest to value of this strategy directly. By acting on my idea I thought wanted to be a freelance consultant (one possible self), I learned what I really wanted was to do such work but back in a higher education setting (my true self!). When we fail to act, we never make progress from the conceptual self to our actual self.

Strategy #3 – Allow Yourself a Transition Period

When making a major life change, it may be efficient but unwise to just “rip off the bandage”! I think that is why so many leadership development initiatives fail because the self or other imposed expectation is that we immediately change course. The problem with doing so is that we have not taking the time to get ourselves (and certainly our teams) time to adjust to this new way of operating. Such quick and dramatic changes become so overwhelming that the shock to the system causes us to retreat back to the safety of doing things the old, albeit ineffective ways. Whether it be a career change or a leadership transition, give yourself time to hold on to what you know still works well while you are letting go to gain something new. Ease into a new “self” gradually but purposefully. I always share that is ALWAYS better to be running to something versus running away from something.

Strategy #4 – Avoid the Dramatic Gesture

As you can tell from above, Dr. Ibarra recommends earning “small wins or changes” as opposed to making a dramatic life change in the blink of an eye. Such gestures may work well in the movies but not so much in real life. Small steps or experiments can and often do lead to big changes. Take on a project at work or pro bono for a non-profit just to see if the career change or role you are contemplating still holds the same appeal when you are actually doing it. If a small change in your leadership behavior works out well, then increase your efforts in a steady but progressing manner. As Real Estate and leadership author Gary Keller shares, “success is sequential, not simultaneous.”

I get it, when you are not getting the results you want or if it seems like “the grass is greener on the other side of the hill”, just remember you still have to do the hard work that got you over the first hill to the grassy field you are presently rolling in! If it is now not as appealing as it once was, that is perfectly fine. You should want to be the kind of person who wants to do and be more, just remember that there were no short cuts that got you here; thus, there will not be any that will get you there! The good news is that since you are wiser and experienced, it may not take quite as long!

Yours in leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc

Sunday, October 7, 2018

The ONLY thing your poor leadership gets you is talked about!

When I share what I do with other people, inevitably I get the “let me tell you about my horrible boss” stories. They go on to tell me not only is their supervisor a bad boss, but they are not a very good person with absolutely NO redeeming characteristics. Since I usually hear about other aspects of an individual’s personal or professional life when their boss is great at best or tolerable at least, it gets me thinking out loud that the ONLY thing poor leadership gets you is talked about!

According to workplace studies completed by the Ken Blanchard company, 70% of reported stress in the environment is attributed to someone’s supervisor. That is just amazing to me. Of all the things that can cause us stress on the job – deadlines, insufficient resources, co-workers, etc. – all of that pales in comparison to the stress an individual in authority can place on another.

That is why a big part of my purpose and mission in life is to teach valuable leadership lessons now that produce leaders for life – both in duration and quality! It amazes me that we have access to more leadership resources, speakers, books, podcasts, videos, assessments, systems, curriculums, and trainings are we are still not moving the needle fast enough or far enough to make our workplaces more humane and productive. You see when you take care of the first, the second quickly follows.

If you are a leader and the only indication of your impact is how badly someone complains about you to others, then you have some work to do. I can speak from personal experience on this since there was a time in my career when I made many leadership mistakes in this arena. Don’t get me wrong, I still make plenty of mistakes, but I at least have tried very hard to not repeat the ones that address how I treat and value others.

Let’s assume you have some kind of indication that your leadership is not what is should be. Your people are complaining, they have stopped coming to you for guidance, and they are just going through the motions albeit in a very grumpy bear fashion. If that is the case, you may want to ask some dichotomous questions.

Do you lead out of fear or respect?

I know there have been many decisions that I have made that my team did not agree with, but they usually respected my decision because they were not fearful of expressing their opinion. They knew that often I would go with their decisions and ideas but sometimes as a leader we have to make the tough call. If you have built up “leadership credits” with team members because they know you respect them, they will respect you. They know you have set up a “safe” environment where ideas are heard without censure, respectful disagreements are tolerated, and there is mutual respect all around. Only insecure people lead from fear, only the most underserving of the title of leader enjoy it.

Do you desire compliance or commitment?

In today’s work environment where situations occur quickly, and departures happen all to frequently, I will take commitment over compliance any day of the week. Further, I would much rather have a team member who is not as technically competent, yet, but is “all in” when it comes to the values, mission, and vision of your enterprise. As a leader, you have to decide what you are willing to train someone to do as opposed to what you want them to bring “factory equipped.” Someone who is merely in compliance mode is just giving you compliance quality work. They are not innovating, stretching, or adding value. Instead, they are just waiting around for you to tell them what to do and then merely complying with your wishes. Just think of how bigger, better, or more profitable your enterprise could be if you unleash the talent of those around you versus trying to just control it.

Do you lead on codes or covenants?

I once had the opportunity work with an incredible leader who was acting as a temporary chief academic officer of a college where I was working. One day he shared a quick comparative analysis of Earnest Hemmingway and William Faulkner (the real author!). He provided an insight that if you look at Hemmingway’s novels, they are very masculine filled with male characters who live by a code, die by a code, fight by a code, and love by a code. These “man codes” are so self-ingrained in the characters that they cannot imagine living any other way and have little tolerance for those that do.

In Faulkner’s novels, however, the characters lead their lives by strong covenants. Commitments and agreements, they make with others even after they have passed away These covenants capture strong moral “magnetic norths” that inform their lives but allow for flexibility versus unyielding “road maps” that do not allow for any deviation to see if a better route or a better world is just over the next hill.

I understand in today’s litigious environment, as leaders we are often encouraged to lead by strict codes. Codes that dictate a strict legalism in our work where deviation is frowned upon and what is fair or right is dictated by a manual. When we lead by covenants, however, it is not that we ignore the rules, rather we supersede them because whereas it is easy to break a rule or a code, it is much harder to break a promise or a covenant! When leaders and team members make a promise or covenant to treat each other with respect, that we would never bully or harass someone, or that we will value individual and group differences, we do not need rules to dictate our behaviors because we do more than the minimum, we live by maximizing others!

Robert Greenleaf, the father of Servant Leadership, shares that the best indicator of whether or not you are a leader worth of being followed is when the people around you are happier, wiser, stronger, and more fulfilled. It is all a matter a focus. As writher and pastor Andy Stanley shares, when your leadership is just about you, it will last long enough to be someone’s bad example. When your leadership is all about others, it will last forever.

That kind of leadership gets you talked about, but in a very, very good way for a very long time!

Yours in leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Principal Consultant – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

Visit our website at: www.outloudinc.com

For more information on the John Maxwell Team, please visit

http://www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/williamfaulkner/

Feel free to “LIKE” our FB Page www.facebook.com/outloudinc