Space for Quiet

Each of us wants and needs to have space for quiet,

to get inspired.

Go outside, find space for those serene, lonely moments amidst the simple beauty of nature.

Connect with your inner self.

Be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature, and God.

Learn how to listen. You have to wait for clarity.

Just go with the flow and the answer will come.

Rest your gaze. Open your eyes,

for then one begins to see with the eyes of the heart.

Reflect on the beauty of a simple life.

Wise choice leads to feelings of liberation, even exhilaration.

Better follow your heart,

to trust it.

In the book Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art, author Quinn McDonald suggests a process for creating 'found poetry'. The above poem came from words I cut from a variety of articles printed in Yoga Journal and Oprah's magazine. I decided to share it today because I have had a couple of conversations lately regarding the need for leaders to find time for quiet and reflection. It's not easy to do, but it is one of the most important leadership tasks we have. I hope this poem will inspire you to make space in your busy life for quiet and that you are able to follow your heart to your best leadership.

Best wishes,

Gage

Flow - The Motivating Leader

Rereading Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi's work on flow made me wonder about the leader's role in creating flow experiences for the members of our organizations. This is much simplified but for the purposes of this quick note this definition will suffice: "Flow tends to occur when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable." If the challenges are too great for the person's skill, the person becomes anxious. If the challenges are too low, boredom can set it. This short definition has given me a great tool for analysis. If I'm feeling bored, then what do I need to do to challenge myself. If I'm feeling anxious in my work, what do I skills do I need to work onto be more able to handle the task at hand?

In the day-to-day reality of leadership, part of our task is to match skill sets with jobs that need to be done. I stayed at one university for eleven years, in part because my supervisor was able to find new things for me to do and to learn - in other words, she gave me challenges that were in reach but required me to be fully engaged in the work to do them well. Are you challenging the people you work with appropriately? If you are not, have you set up a culture that allows people to address it individually or ask for new opportunities or training as appropriate to the situation?

It's true that we can't really motivate others, but we can certainly demotivate them? We can also challenge and support them. What kind of leadership are you exercising? Is it more likely to produce anxiety, boredom or flow? What do you need to do to find the right level of challenge and skill for yourself and others? Again questions that only you can answer!

Good luck,

Gage

Quote from Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (1997).

Ideas and Actions

“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.” Joel Barker

In the latest edition of the UTSA Student Affairs staff newsletter, I wrote about a woman who made a very large gift to the university to fund scholarships. Years earlier, she had heard students discussing the difficulties of paying for college. What makes her different from so many of us is that instead of ignoring what she heard, instead of feeling sorry for the students, instead of wishing the world was otherwise, she did something to make a difference. She started a scholarship fund with a small donation and she kept adding to it throughout her life, finally ending with a multi-million dollar bequest. She saw a need and took action.

She saw a need and took action. I don’t think this characteristic by itself defines a leader, but I’m beginning to wonder if it is possible for leadership to exist without it. Last week I wondered if the term ‘creative leader’ was redundant, since leaders have to be able to see new possibilities, new ways of doing, new ways of being and that seems to be the very definition of creativity. Here is the definition from dictionary.com “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination”. I still think creative leader is redundant, but it’s not enough. Having a new idea is fantastic, seeing a new way to meet a need is wonderful, but without the next step of ‘taking action’, there’s not much leadership in evidence. While lead is not always a verb, in this context, lead is an action word. A person has to be moving us forward in one sense or another for us to consider it leadership. It may be from one state of being to another, but I think change is required.

And, as I’ve said before, there have to be other people involved. If I walk out of the room saying ‘Follow me’ and everyone stays in their chairs, there is not a whole lot of leading going on!

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending TEDx San Antonio* and I listened to more than a dozen people who exemplified leadership. Their initiatives ranged from addressing hunger to ending the death penalty, from fostering creativity in children to helping people who are paralyzed walk – they covered a very wide range of issues and ideas. All of them have their own style, their own focus, their own way of thinking about issues, but all of them have these characteristics:

^They pay attention to the world around them.
^They see a need and believe they can make a difference.
^They find others who know about and care about this need they have identified.
^They are willing and eager to learn.
^They are able to step out on their own if need be, but able and willing to connect with others.
^They envision a world that is different from and better than the one that currently exists.
^They take action.

If the quote above is right, these folks are going to change the world by changing their part of it – sounds like leadership to me.

Best wishes,

Gage

*http://www.tedxsanantonio.com/

"Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor."

Now that the academic year is in full swing, it’s time for me to start writing this blog again. For me this past month or so was first a time of quiet and then a busy time at work, so I let myself take a break. Part of dancing is paying attention to rhythm and timing. If you’ve ever tried dancing with a partner who doesn’t understand or doesn’t pay attention to rhythm and timing, you know how important it is. There’s a reason exercise classes use music – it does help keep the energy level up, but it also helps even the most rhythm challenged of us keep out of everyone else’s way.

It’s important to understand our own rhythms. Sometimes we need to get up and really move and get things done and sometimes we need to sit still and be quiet. The more we understand our rhythms and find ways to live in sync with those rhythms, the smoother our life dance becomes. It’s true in our home life as well. If my rhythm is the tortoise’s slow and steady wins the race and I share my living space with someone who prefers to emulate the hare, then at times we’re likely to have conflict. These differences can also work to our benefit if we let them. The partner who likes to get up and go can energize the ‘tortoise’. The partner who needs time to recharge and reflect can help the ‘hare’ learn the benefit of a little quiet time.

This understanding of timing and rhythm is also an important skill for leaders. There are times to push and people who need pushing; there are times to stop and reflect and help others do the same. There are people who need encouraged to step out of their comfort zones; there are people who need to be encouraged to stay within the rules and boundaries. And just to confuse the issue, some people need both.

Organizations have rhythms too. The rhythms may be based on the deadlines of the work or the style of the leader. Timing may be different throughout the year. External factors have an impact. The permutations and possibilities are nearly endless and leaders need to pay attention to each variable and to the interplay of them all.

When we stop to think about it, it can be a bit overwhelming. However, the simplest and most important way to develop this leadership skill of understanding organizational and staff rhythms and timing is to pay attention to ourselves. As we begin to understand about our own rhythms and timing, we become more in sync with the rhythms and timing of the people around us and the organizations we are part of.

So do you need a break or do you need to get up and go? What about the people around you? Just a little something to pay attention to this next week as you dance along your way.

Take care,

Gage

* The quote is by Hesiod dating 800 BC.

Okay this next part is just silly, but in looking for a quote about rhythm or timing I found this limerick and it made me laugh so I'm sharing it with you. It's attributed to Anonymous

There was a young woman named Jenny,
Whose limericks weren't worth a penny.
Her rhythm and rhyme
Were perfectly fine
But whenever she tried to write any,
She always had one line too many.

"Vacation used to be a luxury....

... however, in today's world, it has become a necessity." Unknown

Today, I’m wrapping up my vacation and tomorrow I head back to work. I’ll pay for being gone. When I left the office, I managed to get my e-mail inbox down to zero – it won’t be zero now and it will be a while before I’m caught up. There are some tasks that I let sit for two weeks and I’ll need to get started on them again. I know I have a workshop to lead on Tuesday and a committee meeting on Monday in addition to regular meetings so there will be no easing back into the action when I return.

That’s not meant to be a list of complaints; it’s just the reality of taking time away from a busy job. As a result, many people choose not to take vacation or they only take little bits of time away. Then even when they are away from the job, they spend time answering e-mail and working on projects - not much of a break. People in leadership positions are particularly prone to this behavior. After all if they are gone, someone else must pick up the work and keep things going. This can create one of two worries – either we worry that the work won’t get done right without us or we learn that we aren’t indispensible. It’s hard to know which worry is scarier, so some people worry about both!

Yet the reality is that we all need time away and perhaps effective leaders need the time away more than most. Have you ever been frustrated working on a jigsaw puzzle? Then you get up and walk away for a while and when you come back not only do you find the piece immediately, you can work a large section quickly. It also works with crossword puzzles and anytime you are stuck in a project. Time away, no matter what you do with it, refreshes your vision, your ideas, and your perspective in many ways.

Think for a moment about the word ‘recreation.’ One dictionary defines it as ‘refreshment of one's mind or body after work, through activity that amuses or stimulates’; another defines it as ‘refreshment of health or spirits by relaxation and enjoyment’. But there’s a third way to think about it. When you split the word it becomes re-creation meaning re-newal. And that’s the most important reason to take vacation. It may be hard to get away, it may be hard work when you come back, but to continuing being effective creative leaders, we need to take a break – a real one – and come back renewed and refreshed and ready to do our best work. Vacation as a leadership skill - who knew?

Take care,

Gage

"You can not lead where you do not go." Don Ward

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a professional conference and presented a program there. I hadn’t submitted a proposal in some time, but decided that I needed to start again. I’ve realized that if I’m tired of sitting through ‘sit and listen’ presentations on the same old topics, I need to step out there and do something different. So I submitted a proposal to present ‘The Leadership Dance’ even though there was a possibility that no one would show up or like it if they did.

I’ve mentioned this workshop before (Stepped On Anyone’s Toes Lately) and in its full form it takes at least an hour and a half. I only had 60 minutes which meant I would not be able to do the full workshop. Instead I started by explaining the history of the workshop and its purpose of creating an opportunity for participants to experience the partnership aspect of leadership. I explained kinesthetic learning (briefly, it is learning by doing rather than by listening or reading). Kinesthetic learning is an appropriate style for this workshop since there is really only one way to learn to be an effective leader and that's by actually practicing leadership. Then I told them that they were the brave group who would choose to attend a session with the words lively, interactive, and dance in the description and asked them to move the chairs back against the walls.

There was a fair amount of nervous laughter at this point and one person actually left the room, but the rest stayed and were good enough sports to give it a try - though one person told me later he had been pretty resistant to the idea at first. For the next 30 minutes we had a dance lesson and each person had a chance to serve as a leader and as a follower and then we talked about their experiences. Based on their comments and evaluations, participants both enjoyed the session and learned something, so it was a successful endeavor.

I share this story for two reasons. First, when you do something that is unusual, you take the chance that some people will be resistant to the idea. However, while some people will walk away from the opportunity presented, others will hang in there. Of course, those who hang in there may not like it. But that's no reason to refrain from taking the chance. If we can just get past our fear that we'll look foolish or that people won't understand what we're trying to do, our possibilities to be creative, to teach, to lead will expand immensely.

This is, of course, the second reason to share this story. Some participants said they gained a new understanding of leading and following. Others commented that they would now try to find creative ways to do their work. Still others asked for further information about the exercises in the larger workshop. In other words, they were engaged in learning. I've presented the Leadership Dance many times to a wide variety of groups, some of which were very surprised by what they were expected to do. But as one person told me, they may joke about having had to dance, but they remember it and that's more than usually happens after a speech. Learning something new often requires the learner to be a bit uncomfortable; seems only fair that the teacher ought to be a bit uncomfortable sometimes too.

So what are you not doing because it's a bit risky? Is there a time or a place when you might just risk testing out that new way of doing things? After all, a significant part of leading is asking a group to go someplace or do something new; shouldn't leaders be willing to try something new as well?

Take care,

Gage

Giving Up Control

I've been traveling this weekend and I'm reminded again that air travel is a great way to practice the experience of being out of control - literally. When I travel by air, I can't make the plane take off, I can't make it land when or even where I want to, and I certainly can't make my luggage show up at the right airport. It's a lesson in patience many passengers would do well to practice.

So what's that got to do with leadership? After all, leaders are supposed to be in control of what happens in their organizations, aren't they? In fact, one style of leadership is even called command and control. However, no matter how hard a leader might try to control all aspects of an organization, it's not really possible. Margaret Wheatley says part of our challenge in leaders is that we confuse order and control. She goes on to say, "What if we could reframe the search? What if we stopped looking for control and begin in earnest the search for order.... (The) basic shift needs to be from control to order, from a reliance on formal authority and procedures to a reliance on the self-organizing principles of people..."

This means a very different sort of leadership is needed, a kind of leadership that allows others to do their job well without the leader's needing to control every instance of the work. It requires different kinds of training and hiring, most of all it requires communication and great trust.

Trust like the kind we put in airlines. And we know, for all the terrible headlines on one end of the spectrum and petty annoyances on the other end, the airlines actually do quite well. After all, I don't want them to take off when the plane needs maintenance or the weather is really bad no matter how important I think my timeline. And one way or another I've always ended up back home and I had very little to do with it. Patience, trust, letting go of our needs for control, more leadership skills to think about.

Take care,

Gage

“Respect, Ordinary Respect”

The phrase that is the title of today’s blog comes from the book Invictus by John Carlin. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I am enjoying the book. The book is a very straight-forward telling of one part of the history of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s place in its history. It is a fascinating story. But what has caught my attention at this point, about two-thirds of the way through, is the concept captured in that phrase.

In spite of all that he experienced during the era of apartheid, Nelson Mandela was able to understand the people around him and to transcend his experiences and interact with everyone from a place of respect. He was able to understand the national experience and the experience of individuals. He was able to treat everyone, including his jailers and people who most would consider his enemies, as human beings worthy of his respect. And in giving respect he was able to earn it.

Here is a quote from the book that illustrates the point. The Sisulu referenced here is Walter Sisulu a “veteran ANC (African National Congress) organizer” who is six years older than Mandela and for many years shared a prison cell with Mandela.

“It was Sisulu, for example, who best understood how to thaw the white jailers’ hearts. The key to it all, as he would explain much later, was ‘respect, ordinary respect.’ He did not want to crush his enemies. He did not want to humiliate them. He did not want to repay them in kind. He just wanted them to treat him with no-frills, run-of-the-mill respect.

“That was precisely what the rough, undereducated white men who ruled over his prison wanted too, and that was what Mandela endeavored to give them right from the start, however hellish they made life for him.”

Time and again, the author relates the many ways Mandela showed others respect. Mandela, quite literally, spoke their language, learning Afrikaans while in prison. He appreciated character and talent and, as president, appointed staff based on those characteristics rather than racial identity. With person after person, he disarmed them by treating them with respect.

Invictus is a great story of leadership on the international scale and yet the difference made in little details - by Mandela’s ability to treat others with respect. For us, in organizational leadership, it is those little details that are important. When we take the time to understand what is important to another, we convey respect. When we really listen to what someone has to say, we convey respect. When we acknowledge another’s point of view, even if we don’t agree with it, we convey respect. And when people respect each other as human beings and act on that respect, it is possible to find common ground. And common ground is a place where leadership can take root.

If “simple, ordinary respect” can help a nation stop from tearing itself apart, what might it do for our organizations?

Take care,

Gage

Listenting as a Leadership Skill

"One of the easiest human acts is also the most healing. Listening to someone. Simply listening. Not advising or coaching, but silently and fully listening." Margaret J. Wheatley


If you ask people about listening, about what is happening during a conversation, most people are ruefully honest. They admit they are often thinking about what they want to say in response. Or they acknowledge that they are really just waiting for their turn to talk. And that's in a one-on-one conversation. We all know it's even worse in a meeting or presentation especially if we have a device with us that allows us to check our e-mail or read a text or see who just called and left a message.

Listening well means we have to let go of our own agenda and just hear what the other person needs to say. Listening well takes time; it takes being willing to let the other person find their way to what they need to say. Both of these acts are difficult, but it seems to me that the most difficult part of listening for most of us is the need to be comfortable with silence. When someone needs to tell us a story that is difficult or important, it can take courage to say what needs to be said. It can be difficult to find the words. And so the listener must wait, patiently, quietly, openly and that may be the hardest task of all.

Listening well is a crucial skill for leaders. Leaders have to be able to hear what is being said and, perhaps most importantly, what is not being said. Leaders have to be willing to hear hard truths so they need to encourage others to share what is important to them individually and to the organization. For that to happen, leaders have to be able to listen openly and to refrain from becoming defensive when they don't like what they hear. When leaders can't do this, then organizational members become unwilling to take the risk of sharing their perspectives.

How are you at listening? Really listening as Wheatley describes it - listening without advising, coaching, judging, or preparing to jump in. Can you listen to someone's story without trying to fix things? Can you hear a hard truth with an open mind and heart? This week, why don't you pay attention to your listening and see what you learn? If someone comes to you with a concern this week, can you take a couple of deep breaths before you answer and see what happens? They may find they have more to say or you may find a better response. Even more basic, can you refrain from looking at your e-mail during the next meeting you attend no matter how boring the meeting may be? Even a dull meeting is a good place to practice real listening; you may find what you learn surprising.

Good luck with your listening this week - I hope some readers will be willing to share what they discovered.

Take care,

Gage

Forgiveness in the Leadership Dance

One of the skills we talk about with new supervisors or committee chairs is the skill of delegation. It can be one of the toughest things we have to do as leaders – to acknowledge that we alone are not responsible for the success of our organizational endeavors. We truly can’t do it all. We have to depend on others. In our leadership dance, we have to let go of our partner’s hand and trust that they know the steps.

When we delegate, we are not only handing off a task, we are sharing the responsibility and we have to trust in another’s ability and their willingness to do what is needed to complete that task. When we delegate, we have to be willing to allow for different ideas about the best way to accomplish the task, we have to be willing to give the other person space to be creative, and we have to be willing to understand that mistakes may happen.

Understanding that mistakes will happen is important for leaders, but it is also necessary for every member of a group. Michael McCullough, professor of psychology at the University of Miami puts it this way, “…one of the ingredients you have to have to get individuals to cooperate with each other is a tolerance for mistakes.” I had never really thought of it this way before, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?

McCullough goes on to say, “Sometimes I’m going to let you down….And if you take each of those mistakes as the last word about my cooperative disposition, you might just give up and so no cooperation gets done. So, really our ability to cooperate with each other and make things happen that we can’t do on our own is undergirded by an ability to forgive each other for occasional defects and mistakes.”*

Therefore, as leaders not only do we need to learn to delegate, we need to pay attention to the way we respond to mistakes, and we need to foster a willingness among all members of the group to tolerate mistakes - the mistakes of others, their own mistakes and those of the leader. On the other hand, we also need to set high standards for performance and hold people accountable for poor performance. Yet another paradox in our leadership dance: We have to find ways to lead our partners to excellence while understanding that they may make missteps along the way. Accountability and forgiveness - two challenging, contradictory, and essential skills we all need for the leadership dance.

Take care,

Gage

*quote from Einstein's God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, by Krista Tippett. I heard it this morning on Tippett’s NPR show ‘Speaking of Faith.’