How are you?

Busy? Relaxed? Energized? Tired?

I notice a pattern in modern life. I’m going too fast and packing too much in my days. I’m hunting for stimuli – or at least I’m distracted by them. I notice restlessness when I’m already tired. I see most people around me living by schedules that don’t leave space to slow down and to be mindfully aware of what really happens. How do you wake up to the present?

I’m lucky, though. Since I am self-employed, I can schedule time for contemplation. I know that I need some time for silence – to be my best self again when I work with clients. When I’m going too fast – I am less awake, less present in the moment.

So I’ve started an experiment. My intention is to follow my energy as much as possible – what do I feel like doing now? What gives me pleasure? What do I need at this moment?

Let’s wise up and go with the flow.

Let’s see if and how my experiences and results change when I give more attention to what I’m doing right now, with mindfulness. What emerges if I let go of attachment to outcomes and SMART goals?

For instance, my intention is to create something new (it’s been stewing and brewing for a while) but I’m not going to translate that into a target up front, like: “Finish my next book by the summer”.

Trust this moment

I’m going to BE with whatever is present – instead of only focusing on everything I must DO. I’m going to trust that things will work out – instead of fearing that I won’t get enough done when I follow my energy and needs.

I’m curious to see what emerges, or what important clues I get (that I may have missed in my busy-doing mindset) when I’ll be more mindful. It feels like an adventurous journey – in a way it’s letting go of (the illusion of) planning and control. I’m tired of trying to force reality into my mould according to schedules and goals.

Can you BE present instead of focusing on everything you must DO? 

What if I was more open and trusting toward reality? I have my intentions – but let’s see what happens when I travel in that direction: listening, feeling, sensing, checking, learning whether I’m aligned with what is present.

Let’s “wise up” and go with the flow – if there is any. Or wait ashore, if there is no flow, temporarily. The tide will eventually rise again – and until it does – why not enjoy your quiet time at the beach?

How do you satisfy your need for introversion, contemplation, quiet time?

People don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflection on experience. Regarding going too fast, consider this: There are three times to wake up: never, afterwards or while it is happening. As Eckhart Tolle says:

“Don’t ask, how long can I stay awake?
Rather count how many times you woke up.”

• How do you help yourself to wake up?
• How are you? What’s your energy and needs at this moment?
• How does your day change when you acknowledge them?

Marcella Bremer co-founded this Leadership & Change Blog and OCAI-online.com. She’s an author and culture & change consultant.  Check out Marcella’s digital magazine issues, white papers, videos, interviews and articles about positive leadership, culture, change and new organizations.  http://www.leadershipandchangemagazine.com

The post Are You Awake? appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Willpower Exhaustion

Because of my exertion-exhaustion approach,  my world came crashing down with life threatening illnesses that cost me everything in my life.  While I wished I had learned the lesson in a less traumatic way, there was a gift in that experience.

It catalyzed me to seek mindset tools and technologies to create results with ease and less effort.  It motivated me to learn how the brain works and its impact on our thoughts, emotions and behaviors.  It taught me how to live and realize inspiring work and life.

While my details may be different than yours, how many times as a leader have you:

• Used brute force and over-efforting to achieve goals?
• Mustered every ounce of your being to power through what needed to be done?
• Berated yourself for not making the changes and vowed to try harder?

Willpower is one of the least understood concepts, especially in the world of leadership.  To make tough decisions, manage never-ending changes and handle the demands of their roles, leaders rely heavily on willpower to make things happen.

Leaders also often pay a heavy price when they hit the willpower wall and spiral downward on both personal and company levels.  Let’s take a look at why.

Myths & Realities:  What Willpower Is and Is Not

Psychologists now understand that willpower is defined by 5 specific characteristics:

• Delaying gratification and resisting short-term temptations to meet long-term goals
• Overriding an unwanted thought, feeling or impulse
• Employing a “cool” cognitive system of behavior rather than a “hot” emotional system
•  Effortful regulating of self by the self
• Limited resource capable of being depleted

According to Kelly McGonigal PhD, author of The Willpower Instinct, willpower is an instinct that comes from both the brain and body.

The prefrontal cortex houses our decision making and behavioral control functions.  Self control, or willpower, is directed by this part of the brain.

Brain science tells us also that the prefrontal cortex can be easily depleted from cognitive and emotional tasks (such as, regulating our emotions).  The same tasks that leaders are required to perform non-stop in their roles.

The fact that we have just so much willpower before it runs out is a critical, yet seldom addressed issue in the world of leadership.  Willpower-depleted leaders have a tendency to push the envelope even harder until they crash and burn.  The ultimate risk for leaders is suffering from serious willpower exhaustion.

When leaders hit this danger point, the company pays a high price in irrational decision making, addictions, low productivity, out of control emotions, a toll on personal lives and the list goes on.

The key is for leaders to learn the right use of willpower to lead their company to higher levels of success and growth.  In my experience in working with leaders, below are examples when willpower is used for the right reasons:

• Delaying immediate gratification in your decision making

Doing so builds a leader’s strategic thinking capacity – ie., focusing on long term company gains, rather than reacting to “short-termitis” or immediate gratification.

• Living your purpose, vision and values

Living your company’s purpose and values takes daily leadership discipline and self-control. This right use of willpower requires leaders to respond to unexpected events through the lens of  purpose, vision and values, rather than go into crisis mode.

• Pacing change and growth

Most leaders have high initiative.   This quality is typically a leadership asset.  However, when it comes to change and growth, leaders must learn to utilize willpower to pace both at a rate their organization can handle.  A leader’s urge to go full force will cost the company the very outcomes it seeks.

How Do Leaders Exhaust Their Willpower?

The factors below are just the tip of the iceberg.

• Inability to Right-Size Stress

Under high levels of stress, the fight-or-flight response floods a leader’s body with energy to act instinctively rather than being utilized by the prefrontal cortex for effective decision-making.  High stress drives a leader to focus on short term survival outcomes, rather than the big picture, due to depleted willpower.

•  Trap of Excellence

Striving for excellence can be a trap for perfectionism.  Perfectionistic leaders have a mindset … “if I am not perfect in performing this task, then I am a failure.”  Expecting a perfect outcome takes its toll on a leader’s willpower and puts him/her into over-drive.  Such perfectionistic tendencies show up in  micro-managing, “analysis paralysis” or unwillingness to delegate, thus further depleting a leader’s energy reserves.

•  “Away From” Motivated Goals

“Away from” motivated goals are stated in terms of what you don’t want —  eg., “I don’t want to procrastinate anymore.”  “Away from” goals actually reinforce the outcome you don’t want.  They also take enormous willpower to overcome and, doing so, depletes that scarce resource.

•  Deficient Brain Fuel

Given the on-going demands on time and energy, leaders often neglect exercise, diet and sleep to cope with their workload.  Yet ignoring these basic necessities for brain functioning further depletes a leader’s blood sugar needed to fuel willpower, resulting in decreased performance.

The key is to recognize your willpower’s limitations – in quantity and effectiveness.  The next step is to learn how to strengthen your willpower for when you need it most in your  role.

7  Simple Strategies to Strengthen & Conserve Your Leadership Willpower

According to Kathleen Martin Ginis, assistant professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, willpower is like a muscle and needs to be challenged to build itself.  At the other end, just as an over-trained athlete needs rest and recovery, balancing the active use of willpower with downtime is a must.

Below are my 7 favorite strategies for conserving and strengthening leadership willpower.

1.     Empty Your Mind

Quiet Mind

Today’s leaders find themselves driven by a fast paced agenda, often denying themselves critical downtime to replenish their minds and bodies to be effective.  A daily 5-10 minute meditation is your best strategy for reducing stress, improving emotional and physical wellbeing, as well as tapping into your intuition for your next right actions and decisions.

2.     Leverage the Power of Oxytocin

Peer support helps strengthen a leader’s willpower. Doing so makes reaching goals easier, while using less willpower to do so.  A bonus benefit of peer support is an increase in your bonding neurohormone — oxytocin — that lowers stress, increases relaxation and amplifies trust among the team.

3.     Increase Willpower with the Right Fuel

Willpower is not all in the mind.  It is critical to supply your body with the high quality fuel it needs.  Reduce sugar and carbs to avoid energy dips, which can further deplete your willpower supply.

4.     Anticipate Problems

“What if” strategies are critical for both strengthening and conserving your leadership willpower.  Such strategies require you to figure in advance how you will deal with obstacles and make a plan for dealing with such obstacles.

5.     Ask Bigger Questions to Unleash Motivation

Rather than depend on willpower to reach your goals, ask yourself bigger questions to unleash motivation such as … “Who do I want to become as a leader?” … “WHY are these goals important to me?”  Tapping into your deepest  motivations fuels an energy source that pulls you toward your goal, rather than pushing through willpower.

6.     Frame Challenges as Pleasure

Recently I asked a leader to write a one year vision of what he wanted to achieve.  He originally wrote what a struggle it was to overcome his challenges around organization.  I asked him to reframe the challenge as a learning process and a series of small wins that he celebrated, rather than a struggle.

How you speak to yourself can determine success or failure.  The key is to reframe challenges by describing the resourceful state, not the disempowering one, you want to experience to achieve your desired outcome.

7.     Chunk Down to the “Critical Few”

Conserve your willpower for what really matters.  Set priorities and stop doing the things outside the critical few   Schedule time in the morning while you have a full tank of willpower to progress on your critical few.  Then give yourself a break to rebuild your willpower reserve.

The Most Important Point … Are you really ready to change?

Are you really ready to let go of your exertion – exhaustion cycle and experience an easier, more rewarding leadership path, starting TODAY? 

Your challenge with this change is rarely an issue of not knowing “how to’s.”  In fact, seeking out more knowledge can be a trap.

The truth is … change can happen in an instant … almost appear magical to the outside world.

The secret is to ask yourself  3 simple questions: 

What’s the greater motivator right now regarding making this change … to avoid pain or seek pleasure?  Ie., Do you perceive making this change as painful or pleasurable?

What will you gain if you keep using the “white knuckle” approach?

What will you lose if you keep using the “white knuckle” approach?

When you can honestly say that making the above changes is the greater motivator than sticking with old behaviors, the change has already started.  Practicing the “how to’s” just reinforces that desire and you are on your way to a different leadership experience.

The post Brain Science Secrets to Increase Leadership Willpower appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Photo Credit: David Niblack

This final part of our accountable leader series addresses my top 10 leadership and culture practices for a strong accountability organization.

Keep in mind that the 6 internal drivers, addressed in parts 1 and parts 2, account for as much as 90% of your performance and results, including accountability.  Practices by themselves, can’t drive accountability.  They can only reinforce and support a healthy accountability mindset.

From Accountability to High Performance: Top 10 Leadership and Culture Practices To Make That Giant Leap

To build a high performance organization, a strong accountability mindset and practices must be embedded into your company’s DNA.  The two combined catalyze your organization to move from struggle to thriving, from crises to momentum, from inertia to growth.

Below are my top 10 most important leadership and culture practices necessary to make that leap.

1.  Set goals that truly motivate and excite your employees.The first step to a strong accountability culture is to set goals across the entire organization. However, nice sounding goals on paper does not guarantee achieving them.  Most leaders overlook the missing ingredient that drives achievement — MOTIVATION. Employees must be motivated to “want” to achieve their goals.

Below are a few ways to help your employees set goals that they want to achieve.

• Establish goals that challenge them.  Studies have shown that difficult goals result in higher levels of performance than easy goals.

• Elicit each employee’s personal goals and find a way to help them achieve personal aspirations in conjunction with their workplace goals.

• Help employees identify their jobs’ essence – ie: the higher purpose of why that role exists – to appeal to their fulfillment needs.
  

2.  Define outcome or results-based job descriptions that align with company goals.

‘Old style’ skills and competencies job descriptions are poor predictors (or motivators) of future success.  To truly drive results though your people, every leader and employee should have a results-driven job description that identifies their top 3 -5 outcomes, along with clearly defined success measures to be tracked throughout the year.

I also include a more comprehensive set of important factors, when working with leaders, such as: critical success factors; connection to company goals, resources needed; shared vs. sole responsibility; action plan; and what factors could derail achieving the outcomes.

3.  Hire for attitude and motivation; teach the skills.

A recent study showed that almost 50% of new hires left in the first 18 months.  Of those, 89% left because of ‘attitude fit’ issues, while only 11% left because of lack of skills.

The below table illustrates the tradeoff of hiring for motivations vs. competencies and the level of performance you can expect. Hiring for motivation and attitudes over skills is critical to build strong accountability and high performance.

                                         From Under-Performing to Top Performing:

                                         The Motivation vs. Competency Relationship

4.  Make sure your employees have the necessary skills/competencies, tools and resources to succeed in their role.

While the predominant drive of performance is motivation, having the necessary competencies and tools are essential for an employee to act on his/her motivation.

If a role is “too big” for an employee – ie: they lack the skills to succeed, then it is essential to teach, coach and train your employee so they can achieve their goals.

In your employee’s outcome based job description, identify the skills to succeed, where the gaps are and a development plan to eliminate those gaps.

5.   Set clear expectations that your employees understand and agree to.

While leaders often understand the need for clear expectations, many overrate their ability to deliver on the level of clarity needed.  Because of differences in perceptions, language and the meaning given to it, too often a leader’s intended communication is not received or interpreted by their employees in the same way. This is the #1 reason for unmet expectations.

To avoid such a breakdown, at a minimum,

• Communicate expectations in concrete terms – ie: answer all calls within 3 rings.

• Ask employees to repeat back what expectations they heard.

6.  Elicit employee’s emotional buy-in for trust and commitment.

For many leaders, developing a strong accountability organization can be harder than it seems.  The common blind spot is not getting your employees’ emotional buy-in about the importance of accountability.

Buy-in involves capturing the hearts and minds of your employees to take ownership of their roles AND to take ownership of company results.

According to a study done by Partners in Leadership, executives reported that …

…only 10% of their employees fell into the “Buy-in” category, while 84% were seen as either “Comply and concede” or “Exempt and excuse” in terms of owning organizational results.

When employees buy-in, they act as though your company is their company.  They go beyond the expectations of their role and do whatever it takes for the company to succeed.

How many of your employees would fall into the “Buy-in” category and take ownership of your company’s results?

7.  Reward your employees — on their terms — to increase motivation, drive and commitment.

There are 2 kinds of motivation – intrinsic and extrinsic.  Most companies attempt to motivate employees extrinsically – ie: compensation, bonuses and benefits.

Yet Herzberg – top motivation theory expert – found that extrinsic motivators fall into the category of “hygiene” factors and can only eliminate employee dissatisfaction.  They don’t increase motivation.

On the other hand, intrinsic motivators – such as, achievement, meaningful work and recognition – cost little and have the greatest impact on employee commitment.

As a leader, do you know what the intrinsic motivators for each of your employees are?  How much time do you focus on increasing those motivators?

8.   Be firm and let go of consistent under-performers. 

Consistent under-performers lower the entire organization’s performance. They become a de-motivating factor to other employees.  They consume more of a leader’s/manager’s time when it can be better spent on your high potentials and future leaders.

The first step to improving this situation is to realize that you, as a leader, are part of the problem by avoiding the truth. Do what you can for a defined period of time to coach your under-performers to achieve success.

If improvement is not achieved, the second step is to help the employee to transition to a better suited role or another employer.

9.  Create a daily environment and culture of self-responsibility, self leadership and self-learning.

Self-responsibility is the ultimate trait of a high performing organization.  You can’t have a strong accountability culture without every leader and employee taking responsibility for themselves, behaviors and outcomes.

Self-responsible people are the do-ers of the world, not the “done to.” They refuse to see themselves as victims. They believe that they are in charge of their own destiny.  They are the creators of opportunity, rather than believing they are entitled to it.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to go into “how,” to create a culture of self-responsibility, the 4 mindset and behavioral traits essential for self-responsibility are:

• Commitment – a willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed.

• Ownership — taking ownership for all your results.

• Resilience – ability to bounce back and rise above adversity, crises and failures

• Continuous learning – learning from past experiences and mistakes, always seeking to grow and evolve.

10.  Expand your internal locus of control to drive bigger and better outcomes.

A person has either an internal or external locus of control, depending on to whom or what they assign responsibility for what happens.

External locus equates to a “victim” mindset.  Such people believe that everything happens to them.  They are masters of blame, helplessness and low self esteem.  Nothing is their fault.

Internal locus equates to “the accountable person.”  Such people believe they can control or influence the outcomes in their lives.  Even when events are beyond their control, they know they have options how to respond to such events.  They have self-confidence and a learning mindset.

To increase your internal locus, recognize the fact you always have choice.  Brainstorm other options, take small actions and, most importantly, pay attention to and change your negative self talk.

Summary: 

The goal of this 3 part series is to increase your awareness about the one thing.  In this crazy busy world of business, I know the one thing that makes the biggest difference in you and your organization is the level of your game.

Becoming an accountable leader is the catalyst for transforming your untapped potential into hard-core business results. You can only change the level of your game if you are rigorously honest with yourself about the strength (or lack) of accountability, within your organization.

Use the principles and practices in this series to get started. For more personal feedback about building a strong accountability culture, request our complimentary Leadership Strategy Session to define next steps, given your goals and challenges.  However you proceed, take the next step now!

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Practices That Ignite Performance (Part 3) appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Let’s first summarize what you learned in Part 1.  Part 1 addressed:

• The top 3 reasons why your leaders are struggling with accountability and under-performing teams
• Why and how your “mindset” drives as much as 90% of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, communications and, ultimately, results… in all areas of your leadership role, including accountability.
• How the first 3 mindset factors – namely, purpose/vision, values and beliefs – either strengthen or undermine your leadership capacity to drive results through healthy accountability.

To review Part 1 of t

his article series, click here.

Let’s now look at the remaining 3 mindset components of your inner leadership game for building strong accountability and a high performance organization.

Identity

Identity relates to your sense of who you are.  It includes your perceptions about yourself; your strengths and self-judgments; and your roles.  Your identity is mostly outside of your conscious awareness and is either your ally or foe in terms of how big of a game you play as a leader.

The language of identity is expressed through the words “I am …”  The words following “I am …” provide clues how you see yourself and what you most identify with mentally and emotionally.

Empowering Identities: “I am resilient, charismatic, valuable, a change agent, etc.”Let’s take a look at specific examples how your identity shows up in your language – either verbally or in your self-talk.

• Disempowering Identities: “I am a failure, unworthy, angry, inferior, etc.”

Having worked with hundreds of leaders, I have found that to what extent your identities either empower or disempower you in your role and your capacity to drive strong accountability, has to do with your relationship with power. 

To become a strong accountability leader, it is essential that you own your own personal power.  You must develop an “at cause” mindset for all the outcomes in your role.  You must develop a strong internal locus of control  – ie.,  see yourself as a person who can control (or influence) your own success and destiny (rather than your outcomes being determined by outside circumstances or people).

To assess your relationship with power, ask yourself:

• When you think of the word “power,” what negative associations do you have with that word?
• Do you equate power with force?  How might they be different?
• In your daily leadership role, do you find yourself on the “cause side” or “effects side” of your results equation?  Ie. do you feel like you can influence the outcomes in your life or that things and circumstances happen to you (aka Victim mentality)?

A leader’s relationship with power determines to what extent a leader has the capacity to drive results through people, teams and the organization as a whole. Without a healthy, empowering relationship with power, your leadership and organizational performance will suffer and your greatest asset — your people – will be severely under-utilized.

Motivation and Attitudinal Patterns

Every individual has their own unique internal motivation and attitudinal drivers. These drivers are the invisible forces that “pull” a person forward in a specific direction.

These drivers also mirror how you are “wired inside.”  That is, these patterns – uncovered through an online assessment – identify your thinking and decision making style, your primary motivators, your interest and focus filters, your relationship to time, change and even to norms and rules. These patterns predict as much as 70% of you, your team’s and your organization’s performance.

Below are 2 examples of motivation patterns that serve you as either assets or liabilities in driving strong accountability. Keep in mind that there are no “best” patterns. They each have their own strengths and pitfalls.

To keep it simple, the following tables cover only the pitfalls when an individual’s score is too high (not the pitfalls when a score is too low).

• Primary motivation drivers — Power vs Affiliation vs. Achievement

• Relationship to Norms/Rules – Assertive vs. Tolerant

When uncovering these patterns, the overall goal is to help a leader eliminate or minimize the liability patterns while creating more flexibility in thinking and behavior for optimum leadership results.

Any patterns that are too high or too low will undermine a leader’s ability to drive best results through people.

For more information about attitude and motivation patterns and their impact on leadership and organizational performance, go to:

www.empoweredbusiness.com/solutions/organizational-performance.

Emotions

Our emotions are powerful, often unconscious, triggers that drive our behaviors, communications and state. To what extent emotions in your workplace either fuel your organization or destroy the spirit and cohesiveness of your company depends on how you handle and master your emotions in your role.  First, a few basic principles about emotions important to increase your overall effectiveness as an accountable leader.

Every emotion – no matter how positive or negative — is a powerful teacher, catalyst and mirror about yourself that, when used for change and learning purposes, can ignite your leadership growth at lightening speed.

Denial or avoidance of your emotions does more harm to you as a leader than the actual emotions themselves.  The truth is denying and/or avoiding your emotions – like fear or anger – only amplifies the emotion, keeps you stuck in habitual reactiveness, shuts down your rational thinking and destroys your ability to influence and lead your employees.

The “golden ratio” in emotions can unleash leadership capabilities beyond what you can imagine.

New findings show that you perform at your peak when you experience the “golden ratio” in emotions – ie., a 3 to 1 ratio of positive vs negative emotions.  Not only is it unrealistic to try and be in a positive state all the time, it is detrimental to your leadership growth to not gain valuable lessons from negative emotions.

Let’s look at 2 negative emotions that often get triggered in the accountability process and what those emotions are trying to teach you.

Anger or frustration:

If either emotion gets triggered for you in the accountability process, ask yourself as a leader:

• Are you caught up in a blame mentality and not taking responsibility for your contribution to the breakdown?
• Are you a perfectionist and allow no room for employee mistakes or learning?
• Are you impatient or unrealistic in what an employee can achieve by a certain timeframe or given certain circumstances?

Anxiety or fear:

If you experience anxiety or fear in the accountability process, how might either emotion mirror the following about yourself?

• Do you suffer from negative self-perceptions or lack self-esteem?
• Do you lack key accountability skills, such as effective delegation, follow-up and coaching skills?
• When holding others accountable, do you fear conflict?  Does that fear drive you to take on the tasks yourself?
• Do you fear not being liked by your employees?

In part 1 and 2 of this article series, we covered the 6 mindset drivers – mission/vision, values, beliefs, identity, motivation drivers and emotions – that account for as much as 90% of your performance and results, including accountability

The ultimate goal in these 2 articles has been to increase your awareness how mindset factors are impacting your leadership effectiveness and your capacity to drive results through your organization.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this article series to learn my top 10 leadership and culture practices for a strong accountability organization. An article you don’t want to miss!

If you would like more details about your inner leadership game, I invite you to download a complimentary report: Wired to Win Big;  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies for Rising to the Top and Staying There.

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Mindset That Ignite Performance (Part 2) appeared first on The Empowered Business.