I HATED UPLUGGING AND I CHEATED

OK, OK, OK.
I admit defeat.
I did not unplug.
I just was more disciplined about when and how often  I plugged back in.

But I had the goal in the back of my mind all week.
(Maybe should have been in the front of my mind)

What I learned:

--There is an uncomfortable free fall in disconnecting from work.
  And it's very easy to replace with different work rather than settling into
  free space

--I, too, am used to moving something forward, making progress, seeing 
  results.  Not doing that takes an adjustment period. My best, flowing,
  refreshing days came at the end of the week. 

--I like working. I think many of us don't admit that enough. We hide it from
  spouses and kids like work is a shameful addiction. Addiction? Maybe?
  But there are worse.  Let yourself know you enjoy it.

--I unplug best in public spaces like a hotel lobby or a library or a coffee shop.
  I like public privacy for thinking and creating and refreshing. 

--This was a very "mini" break that I took. But still I feel like I am "returning: to
  work with new energy.

Blind spot?  Dont' wait for major vacations that include family or activities.
Find a place to disappear to for a couple of hours at least every two weeks.
Time alone in small segments is a huge leverage of time for refreshing a stale brain or spirit.

1---2---3 UNPLUG

Due to a change in schedule, I have a clear calendar for this week coming up.
I've already declared a vacation for myself--at home.

Now let's see if I can unplug.
In my CEO coaching I see how hard it is to unplug for most top executives.
And I also see how it would help judgment, decisions, perspective and  holding to priorities if only they could unplug if only for a couple of hours a week.

Unplug means:
Stop working on your "should" list
Catch your breath and hear yourself think.
Doing something unplanned for the fun of it
Running away, playing hooky, disappearing
Playing, creating, think hobby.
Managing your guilt or your fear of disconnecting.
Letting yourself lie fallow so new thoughts can grow
Re-gathering yourself.
Being confident enough that you will not lose control or your "place"

Let's see if I can unplug
There are so many barriers to doing it without leaving home or the office.
I'll think of it as a mini-sabbatical.
Here I go
1--2--3  Unplug.

YES, IT IS PART OF YOUR JOB TO INSPIRE

I've seen CEO's who try to get out the the job demand to inspire the organization. They say it's phony or too focused on themselves instead of the business or not needed, just fluff.  And I've seen charismatic leaders fail to inspire because it does ring false, it isn't sincere and they are performing.

Some thoughts on inspiration:

--You can't inspire if you are not inspired yourself

--What is the particular possibility that you want to move forward as your 
  legacy? Something that will make a profound difference for the future of
  the company.

--If you don't know what this possibility is, then get busy and find out. Get a 
   good thought partner to help you get the fire in your belly going. You can 
   not be inspirational til you do this work.

--You may be burned out, scared of not having an idea other than doing the
  same ol' same ol' better.  Not good enough for inspiration. Not good enough       
  for  leading rather than managing from the CEO seat. Do what you have to 
  do. Get rested. Get different people around you. Search out new ideas.  
  Gestate til your own point of view emerges and excites you.

--Talk and talk and talk to grow your idea until it feels like the idea is pulling 
  you. You think about it, talk about it, buy books about it,and get glimpses of
  what you can make happen. Become obsessed with something worth being
  obsessed about.

--You are now ready to inspire and to have your idea pull people so that 
   you don't have to push them

--You are ready to give yourself the gift of inspired work that excites and scares  
   you and keeps you interested every single day
  

TENDER AND TOUGH

I have been thinking about how CEO's need to have the right combination of tender and tough. Most tend in one direction or the other. 

There is no tougher job than the CEO role IF you care about your business AND the people in it--equally.  I know there are top leaders who are pure jerks, wanting only the power and the money and the status. Luckily, I haven't worked with them directly. I write from my experience, not from theory.  I may have been extraordinarily lucky--or naive, but I worked with leaders who wanted the business to thrive and the people to thrive as well. Not that they didn't enjoy their own success. 

I've watched and helped CEO's grow into their role and how they seasoned into
well rounded leaders.  If they started out tender, they blundered in one way.
If they started out tough, they blundered in a different way. All CEO's blunder and some learn!! Learning to add toughness to tenderness is as difficult as adding some tenderness to toughness.  

Learning to fire a colleague you enjoy
Facing a hostile board
Hurting many people to save most people
Knowing quite a few people criticize you daily and enjoy your mistakes
Making a big bad decision that is humiliating and takes recovery measures

These things make you tough.
You have to armor yourself.

AND you have to be able to take the armor off to:
Talk straight without harming 
Address a large group of people from your heart, not just your head
Reflect on your own feelings to guide and change your behavior
Know when you are defeated and need support of all kinds
Open yourself to listening to your people and your company 
Trust your intuition

Balancing tender and tough, not letting one dominate, being able to use both faculties is what makes a great beyond good CEO.  It's a choice to do the difficult. 

MY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT YOU--THE READER

As a the top leader, it's good to make your assumptions overt.
If you don't --well, you know--people will work to guess them
And they will guess wrong.
If you are blind about your own assumptions, get a sounding board 
fast. You to be able need to see what is writ large in your company.

Here are my assumptions about you the reader:

--You are at Senior level or C-Suite level or  you want to be.

--You understand that your power and role make it hard to

get an accurate read of the pulse of your company

--You think you have a better understanding than you do

--You think because you value opinions and are open that people

   tell you their truth

   

--You have worked on your own development but have not created

   your own approach to alleviate the power differential you carry

--You are a good leader and business person or you wouldn't care   

   enough to read these comments

--You like power and have enough self-awareness to have achieved 

   a top role

--Most people maximize the positive and minimize the negative when

  they talk to you

--By the time you are made aware of an issue it is bigger than

  you would like or bigger than you are told

--The longer you are in the top role, the more skewed your perception 
  may be due to familiarity, habit and people's over adapting to you

--The power dynamics I am talking about get exaggerated during

   tough times

--Blind spots come with the top role regardless of your awareness

--You need to be reminded that you have them 

--You'll know when on hits home for you. Some won't.

--The top job is lonely, is isolating, is ridiculously difficult and
  you often act like it isn't and forget it is

--You are the emperor and you don't have on any clothes and the 

   silence is complete

I DARE YOU TO BE TRAINED-----

I dare you to be trained like an entry level person is in your company is.
I think you would be appalled and you would certainly get the best of what your company does not the haphazard stuff normally thrown at people.

Good solid training for people who touch your customers could be your best secret weapon. I don't know how training got to be so low on the totem pole.
And don't give me budget reasons.  Get the nerve to do what's good for the business at the very pedestrian level. Then you'll earn the money in sales to do some of the rest that you want to do.

I have five adult children who all worked many jobs as teens and college students.  Not one of them was trained to do their job and certainly given no context about how their work fit into a larger picture.  They were scared at first that they couldn't do the jobs from cutting donuts to repairing tires to cutting vegetables for an industrial kitchen to launching a ferry.  Then they asked questions, figured out their own way, kept wanting to do a good job, lost respect for their supervisors until they realized their supervisors  didn't know what they were doing either. Everyone was faking their way through the day.  And then they took their gumption, their desire to do good work, their talent and left these workplaces.

Recently i read an article on the decline of training due to fear that trained people would leave anyway  and the cost of continuous training was too much.  Whoa. How about creating a workplace that people don't want to leave??  And one of the tools for retention is people's inherent pleasure in mastering work. Being good at something, doing it well, is a motivator itself.  I remember pick by light warehouse workers with bandaged fingers who knew their productivity numbers and relished digging in to beat their results from the day before. I was looking at retention and job satisfaction. They liked the aesthetic of picking--the speed and finger skill they used.  I had a good supermarket bagger the other day and I complimented her. She said she loved to bag things just right. It was a challenge and doing it well pleased her. Without the compliment. I asked if she was trained to do it.  And she said, "Oh yes, by the best, my boss" Lucky lady.  On the job examples of good work trumps all other approaches to training.   

Think of well-trained entry level people as a primary retention tool. It taps intrinsic satisfaction that can't be bought. And it sets the thermostat for excellence as they stay and grow with your company.

STRIVE FOR DULL

One of the best companies I worked for was described as "ploddingly dull" by Wall Street analysts and yet  they loved the company.  This well managed company set realistic goals and met them year after year after year.  Company leaders told analysts what they were going t do and then did it.  This company kept analysts on their side by keeping them informed--in-depth.  New efforts and innovations were shared. The company was trusted and its success pleased analysts.  

At the moment in time I worked in this company the culture that created
"ploddingly dull" was:

Competent at all levels--people just got the job done
Details got done right--boring wasn't boring
Leaders did not exhort people, they involved them
Leaders set direction and got out of the way--course correcting gently
Change was constant but graceful, not disruptive
Innovation took place in prudent experiments
Talent development was systemic and part of the job. Nothing grandiose.
Business opportunities were scanned for using intuition with analysis

Left foot, right foot, staying the course.
How about a winning ploddingly dull strategy?
Do not yawn.