At first blush, I was tempted to leave Courage out of a leadership model I developed in 2009, because it felt too “emotional.” However, the objectivity of observation made it clear that Courage was essential to the success of Master Integrators of a key vision and absent in those cases where Vision Integration was low. At the end of the day it is merely a matter of physics; an absence of Courage leads to a dilution of the Vision, whereas its presence strengthens it. It is beyond clichés or opinion, it is as it is, an observable result of cause and effect.
Courage is not comfortable. Unfortunately, we live in a society that places comfort above all else. We work for the weekend, early retirement and summers off. Nice homes, bigger homes, plush cars and Heavenly Beds at the Westin. I have nothing against these, per se; but left in the realm of the unconscious, we are easy pray to the siren’s call for comfort. Advertising and so-called market forces perpetuate the message that suffering can, and should, be alleviated. We are bombarded by images of smiles, success and happiness in 30-second sound bites and overpromising self-help methods (including my profession, coaching) that hold out the carrot of perpetual comfort.
As a by-product, our capacity, let alone our desire, for discomfort significantly suffers (ironically, increasing suffering itself). In fact, discomfort is so loathed in our society that we often ingest our own discomfort as a sign of “failure.” Marital problems, a downturn in sales, a state of confusion: these are all precursors to embarrassment and self-deprecation. When success doesn’t simply “flow” or we are not “in the zone,” we beat ourselves up, thinking there is something wrong with us and look for a way out as quickly as possible.
Nothing could be further from truth—or practicality.
Master Integrators of their own vision accept the discomfort of integration. Without apology, they endure uncertainty, confusion and fear itself, to stay the course. A course whose destination they “know” without knowing the course itself. A knowledge they continue to cultivate through more refined levels of Awareness and Discipline. The joy of honoring this “knowing” surpasses the short-term roadblocks and inconveniences of discomfort. This is Courage. And this is perhaps the make-or-break quality of a Master Integrator.
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Mastering Our Attention is Key to Integrating Vision
Buddhism states the nature of mind has three main qualities: it is conscious, cognizant and aware. Buddhism also states that the nature of mind is the nature of everything. So this is a pretty big deal. What are the implications of this on our leadership?
For me, the container of “conscious, cognizant and aware” is the word attention. Where is it focused? What’s the quality of it? How aligned is it with the vision we are aspiring to?
All spiritual traditions, as well as science, medicine and philosophy, tell us that our mind is tremendously powerful. Far more powerful than we can comprehend. Whether we support it with the data of using only 7% of our brain, or that “intelligence” also resides within our body, or use a term like “transcendence” to describe what language can never describe, all schools of thought seem to acknowledge the power of the mind.
As leaders, we are responsible for the application of this power. As Vision Integrators, we are responsible for applying it to the vision, in service of the vision and those who will be impacted by it.
Mastering our attention and aligning it with our core values and vision is a practice and a discipline. It’s not easy, simple or straight-forward. And it’s not necessarily “fun,” in the traditional sense of the word. However, as one cultivates the ability to “tame the mind,” one experiences more and more Fun (capital “F” fun) on a regular and more reliable basis. Imagine how much Fun it would be to know that no matter what life throws at you today, you will still be able to direct your mind and its attention wherever you want it to go. To simply bring it back, whenever it gets thrown off-centre, and place your attention on whatever is most meaningful for you: what could be more Fun than that?
When you’re a leader wanting to make a difference—either in the world, your life or the lives you are effecting—your capacity to remain “conscious, cognizant and aware” in the depths of complexity and challenge becomes paramount to your ability to responsibly integrate a vision into the system you are leading (i.e., your life, group or organization). It’s not paramount because of some lofty ideal one might hold for so-called great leadership; it’s paramount because it’s physics—the simple correlation between cause and effect. As it is.
So, how do you do it?
The top-leaders I’ve worked with around vision—the Master Vision Integrators, as I like to call them—find the discipline to direct their attention towards the vision continually through cultivating Awareness, Discipline and Courage. The mastery comes from the cultivation, not the mastery itself. They actually care enough to become better and better and better at it.
But how can you care if you don’t care?
This is the fundamental question. The answer, as I have observed in working with leaders of varying capacity to integrate vision, is at the heart of what makes a vision magnificent or mediocre. It distinguishes the manager from the leader. The answer is: to truly care you must trust the investment in your core values! With even the slightest discipline around aligning your actions with core values, a natural and energized form of “caring” emerges.
Specifically, “investing” means to direct your attention, your mind, to better (and better and better) identify, understand, articulate and integrate your core-values and vision through uncommon levels of self-awareness and personal accountability.
Identify: There are virtually countless ways to help uncover and identify your core-values and vision; however, you need to be looking. The first step comes from you heart—to care enough to find out. Without this, you will not be able to progress.
Understand: Once you identify your core-values and vision, you need to really understand the true meaning as it pertains to you, not some generic dictionary-defined version of that value. You need to connect on a visceral level with its importance in your life or your group.
Articulate: This is the first step in converting the wisdom, insight and strategy embedded in our values into the outer-world. Words are important (if not the only) place-holders for what we want and need to communicate to others or ourselves to get the job done, to manifest our vision. The written version of our core-values, purpose and vision provide something concrete for us to take to others and figure out how to actualize them.
Integrate: This is where the rubber hits the road, and requires increasing levels of awareness, discipline and courage to find the appropriate form, function and venue for the values and vision to take-hold. This is filled with uncertainty and challenge at almost every step. And for that very reason, it becomes ever so important to develop the “certainty” of controlling our attention to come back again and again to what matters most. To what we value most.
The mind is a powerful thing. It is worth becoming allies with it. Invest in whatever method, support or structure you are comfortable with to better understand your mind and how to control the quality and placement of its attention. Many ways will work. The Buddha, himself, taught in 84,000 different ways to address the different perceptions and needs of various audiences. But the Buddha also warned, repeatedly, even if he sat by your side and taught directly to you all day, he cannot make you enlightened. You have to do the work. You have to care enough to want to get better. That’s the first place your attention must go.
For me, the container of “conscious, cognizant and aware” is the word attention. Where is it focused? What’s the quality of it? How aligned is it with the vision we are aspiring to?
All spiritual traditions, as well as science, medicine and philosophy, tell us that our mind is tremendously powerful. Far more powerful than we can comprehend. Whether we support it with the data of using only 7% of our brain, or that “intelligence” also resides within our body, or use a term like “transcendence” to describe what language can never describe, all schools of thought seem to acknowledge the power of the mind.
As leaders, we are responsible for the application of this power. As Vision Integrators, we are responsible for applying it to the vision, in service of the vision and those who will be impacted by it.
Mastering our attention and aligning it with our core values and vision is a practice and a discipline. It’s not easy, simple or straight-forward. And it’s not necessarily “fun,” in the traditional sense of the word. However, as one cultivates the ability to “tame the mind,” one experiences more and more Fun (capital “F” fun) on a regular and more reliable basis. Imagine how much Fun it would be to know that no matter what life throws at you today, you will still be able to direct your mind and its attention wherever you want it to go. To simply bring it back, whenever it gets thrown off-centre, and place your attention on whatever is most meaningful for you: what could be more Fun than that?
When you’re a leader wanting to make a difference—either in the world, your life or the lives you are effecting—your capacity to remain “conscious, cognizant and aware” in the depths of complexity and challenge becomes paramount to your ability to responsibly integrate a vision into the system you are leading (i.e., your life, group or organization). It’s not paramount because of some lofty ideal one might hold for so-called great leadership; it’s paramount because it’s physics—the simple correlation between cause and effect. As it is.
So, how do you do it?
The top-leaders I’ve worked with around vision—the Master Vision Integrators, as I like to call them—find the discipline to direct their attention towards the vision continually through cultivating Awareness, Discipline and Courage. The mastery comes from the cultivation, not the mastery itself. They actually care enough to become better and better and better at it.
But how can you care if you don’t care?
This is the fundamental question. The answer, as I have observed in working with leaders of varying capacity to integrate vision, is at the heart of what makes a vision magnificent or mediocre. It distinguishes the manager from the leader. The answer is: to truly care you must trust the investment in your core values! With even the slightest discipline around aligning your actions with core values, a natural and energized form of “caring” emerges.
Specifically, “investing” means to direct your attention, your mind, to better (and better and better) identify, understand, articulate and integrate your core-values and vision through uncommon levels of self-awareness and personal accountability.
Identify: There are virtually countless ways to help uncover and identify your core-values and vision; however, you need to be looking. The first step comes from you heart—to care enough to find out. Without this, you will not be able to progress.
Understand: Once you identify your core-values and vision, you need to really understand the true meaning as it pertains to you, not some generic dictionary-defined version of that value. You need to connect on a visceral level with its importance in your life or your group.
Articulate: This is the first step in converting the wisdom, insight and strategy embedded in our values into the outer-world. Words are important (if not the only) place-holders for what we want and need to communicate to others or ourselves to get the job done, to manifest our vision. The written version of our core-values, purpose and vision provide something concrete for us to take to others and figure out how to actualize them.
Integrate: This is where the rubber hits the road, and requires increasing levels of awareness, discipline and courage to find the appropriate form, function and venue for the values and vision to take-hold. This is filled with uncertainty and challenge at almost every step. And for that very reason, it becomes ever so important to develop the “certainty” of controlling our attention to come back again and again to what matters most. To what we value most.
The mind is a powerful thing. It is worth becoming allies with it. Invest in whatever method, support or structure you are comfortable with to better understand your mind and how to control the quality and placement of its attention. Many ways will work. The Buddha, himself, taught in 84,000 different ways to address the different perceptions and needs of various audiences. But the Buddha also warned, repeatedly, even if he sat by your side and taught directly to you all day, he cannot make you enlightened. You have to do the work. You have to care enough to want to get better. That’s the first place your attention must go.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Courage: Vision Integration Depends on It
Courage! This is where a vision can become severely diluted or even stopped in its tracks. It will be required; every leader gets challenged at some point, if not many points. Their response determines whether the vision moves forward or not -- whether it becomes diluted or maintains its full integrity.
I would be remiss if I didn’t place extra emphasis on the realities and less-heroic aspects of visionary leadership. We often read about the fait-acompli, looking back at how everything just fell into place. But from my privileged seat, as a leadership coach, as well as being on my own journey, I assure you it doesn’t go like that. It often times has as much to do with a solid gut-check as a solid strategy and brilliant foresight.
In all the leadership books I’ve read and all the text books we covered in my MBA program, I cannot recall a single chapter on this crucial piece of vision integration. For those leaders who are willing, able and supported enough to get through these challenges that test the limits of courage, the vision moves forward; for those who fear it too much and look for easier ways through, the vision weakens, stalls or dies.
To this end, of course, leadership or executive coaching can be a great benefit, allowing the leader to reflect, challenge, and be supported with integrity to their values and adherence to their vision. This may sound personal, but it is purely professional—and strategic. If the leader can endure the doubts, fears, and emotions that are certain to accompany the implementation of a vision, then the business objectives embedded in that vision can play out; if the leader cannot work through these, it becomes a diluted vision, or another path altogether, that does not hold the strategic benefits of a powerful, inspired, unified vision.
I would be remiss if I didn’t place extra emphasis on the realities and less-heroic aspects of visionary leadership. We often read about the fait-acompli, looking back at how everything just fell into place. But from my privileged seat, as a leadership coach, as well as being on my own journey, I assure you it doesn’t go like that. It often times has as much to do with a solid gut-check as a solid strategy and brilliant foresight.
In all the leadership books I’ve read and all the text books we covered in my MBA program, I cannot recall a single chapter on this crucial piece of vision integration. For those leaders who are willing, able and supported enough to get through these challenges that test the limits of courage, the vision moves forward; for those who fear it too much and look for easier ways through, the vision weakens, stalls or dies.
To this end, of course, leadership or executive coaching can be a great benefit, allowing the leader to reflect, challenge, and be supported with integrity to their values and adherence to their vision. This may sound personal, but it is purely professional—and strategic. If the leader can endure the doubts, fears, and emotions that are certain to accompany the implementation of a vision, then the business objectives embedded in that vision can play out; if the leader cannot work through these, it becomes a diluted vision, or another path altogether, that does not hold the strategic benefits of a powerful, inspired, unified vision.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Your Attention is Your Greatest Leadership Resource
Our attention is a finite resource and goes wherever we place it.
This is a huge statement! Read it again.
You see. Now it’s back on this line.
You are controlling the quality and placement of your attention. As a leader, the awareness of your attention and how you distribute it become, possibly, the most important and leveraged contribution you make on a daily basis. Is your attention on minor, short-term tasks or on substantial, far-reaching interactions? Is it on your reputation and title, or on the situation in-front of you? A problem employee, or company-wide alignment of purpose, values and vision?
As you can see, it matters. And whether the impact is large or small, the amount of attention expended is roughly the same. Whatever we allow to occupy our attention, gets our attention.
How do we choose?
The expression “Keep your eye on the prize” is crucial for Purpose & Vision Integration, successfully applying our attention where it belongs. Easier said than done.
First, what do we mean by “the prize?” I have found that the “prize” of successful leaders belongs in the realm of purpose, vision and values. What’s important at the end of the day, and what will it look like? What’s the vision, and what I am I doing today to make it a reality?
On one level, as a leader, this seems like an obvious mandate. But in practice, stress, financial pressures, time-constraints, peer recognition, and a host of other so-called realities pull and tug on the prize so severely that none of our attention is left for it. Again, our attention is a finite resource and goes wherever we place it (see first line of this article).
How do we, as responsible caretakers of the vision, ensure it receives the best of our attention?
A number of leaders I have worked with have mastered their attention-allocation habits. There are three things they have done extremely well:
• AWARENESS: They invested the time and effort for self-awareness. Unless one is very clear about their values and personal vision, there is nothing consistent for attention to anchor itself to, so it is dependent on the changing winds of day-to-day details, complaints, compliments, etc., which are inevitable.
• DISCIPLINE: They create structures, time, conversations and measurements that capture and hold this quality of attention, so that it serves as a type of “sentinel,” ensuring the finite resource of attention falls under their leadership, rather than randomly distributed events, opinions and occurrences.
• COURAGE: They courageously articulate, protect and communicate their values and vision to those they lead and impact so that everyone is rowing in the same direction. In other words, the collective attention is a reflection of where the leader’s attention is going. When leaders reinforce purpose, values and vision through clear and constant communication, group alignment creates results that are powerful, efficient, and fun.
If you look at these three points and back it out, you’ll notice they are all dependent on a human being and her or his mind. If there is no attention-management within the leader, there is no attention-management within the team or the structures. It is not enough to simply say "we have a vision" or assume that the proverbial "they" are looking after it.
As leaders, only we can be held accountable for what we do with our attention and how much of it aligns with the purpose and vision of the system we lead. This means we get to place it wherever we want with whatever qualities we want it to have. Fun, isn’t it?
Why don’t we all do it?
Why don’t more of us simply place our attention where it is most needed? Because it requires self-awareness, discipline and courage to develop that habit. It is challenging to control our mind and its distribution of awareness and attention so it can be placed where we want it, how we want it, when we want it. Most of us live in the world of distractions, leaving our attention scattered about, devoid of our own dreams and desired outcomes.
High-level strategic leadership requires the time to develop discipline through activities that engage and strengthen self-awareness. Activities that either enable or disable our ability to be who we really are. To defend the vision we have agreed to integrate in the systems we lead.
Freedom and power is useless if we cannot first develop the freedom to control our mind and our attention. For example, we may have the freedom to be happy, yet when anger or fear come into view, do we really have the discipline—the freedom—to turn our attention away from it? When a “difficult conversation” comes between your team and its mission, do you have the courage that yields the freedom to move through it swiftly, with complete integrity and alignment of purpose, values and vision?
This type of freedom is not found in text-books, business schools or most best-selling novels on leadership; this capacity can only be produced by activities that promote it, that access and engage the mind and spirit in such a way that one develops the mental muscles and habits to truly place attention where we want it to go.
This can be accessed through many activities, which differ from person to person, depending upon their disposition and interests: meditation, bike-riding, hiking, painting, writing, journaling, discussion groups, coaching, mentoring, or calligraphy are just a few ideas. They take you outside your thinking-mind and provide access to spirit, self-awareness and mental discipline.
I have noticed that leaders who ensure these activities are guarded in their day-planners demonstrate a keen and ongoing ability to control their attention, seeing situations more clearly and placing it where it is needed most. Moreover, the quality of that attention is clear, strong and, almost always, caring.
It is important to recognize our attention goes wherever we place it. It is one of the few things we actually are allowed to control in this world. As leaders, we are deeply obligated to recognize this power and master its application, to ensure it is us who are doing the leading, and not the fickleness of external change.
This is a huge statement! Read it again.
You see. Now it’s back on this line.
You are controlling the quality and placement of your attention. As a leader, the awareness of your attention and how you distribute it become, possibly, the most important and leveraged contribution you make on a daily basis. Is your attention on minor, short-term tasks or on substantial, far-reaching interactions? Is it on your reputation and title, or on the situation in-front of you? A problem employee, or company-wide alignment of purpose, values and vision?
As you can see, it matters. And whether the impact is large or small, the amount of attention expended is roughly the same. Whatever we allow to occupy our attention, gets our attention.
How do we choose?
The expression “Keep your eye on the prize” is crucial for Purpose & Vision Integration, successfully applying our attention where it belongs. Easier said than done.
First, what do we mean by “the prize?” I have found that the “prize” of successful leaders belongs in the realm of purpose, vision and values. What’s important at the end of the day, and what will it look like? What’s the vision, and what I am I doing today to make it a reality?
On one level, as a leader, this seems like an obvious mandate. But in practice, stress, financial pressures, time-constraints, peer recognition, and a host of other so-called realities pull and tug on the prize so severely that none of our attention is left for it. Again, our attention is a finite resource and goes wherever we place it (see first line of this article).
How do we, as responsible caretakers of the vision, ensure it receives the best of our attention?
A number of leaders I have worked with have mastered their attention-allocation habits. There are three things they have done extremely well:
• AWARENESS: They invested the time and effort for self-awareness. Unless one is very clear about their values and personal vision, there is nothing consistent for attention to anchor itself to, so it is dependent on the changing winds of day-to-day details, complaints, compliments, etc., which are inevitable.
• DISCIPLINE: They create structures, time, conversations and measurements that capture and hold this quality of attention, so that it serves as a type of “sentinel,” ensuring the finite resource of attention falls under their leadership, rather than randomly distributed events, opinions and occurrences.
• COURAGE: They courageously articulate, protect and communicate their values and vision to those they lead and impact so that everyone is rowing in the same direction. In other words, the collective attention is a reflection of where the leader’s attention is going. When leaders reinforce purpose, values and vision through clear and constant communication, group alignment creates results that are powerful, efficient, and fun.
If you look at these three points and back it out, you’ll notice they are all dependent on a human being and her or his mind. If there is no attention-management within the leader, there is no attention-management within the team or the structures. It is not enough to simply say "we have a vision" or assume that the proverbial "they" are looking after it.
As leaders, only we can be held accountable for what we do with our attention and how much of it aligns with the purpose and vision of the system we lead. This means we get to place it wherever we want with whatever qualities we want it to have. Fun, isn’t it?
Why don’t we all do it?
Why don’t more of us simply place our attention where it is most needed? Because it requires self-awareness, discipline and courage to develop that habit. It is challenging to control our mind and its distribution of awareness and attention so it can be placed where we want it, how we want it, when we want it. Most of us live in the world of distractions, leaving our attention scattered about, devoid of our own dreams and desired outcomes.
High-level strategic leadership requires the time to develop discipline through activities that engage and strengthen self-awareness. Activities that either enable or disable our ability to be who we really are. To defend the vision we have agreed to integrate in the systems we lead.
Freedom and power is useless if we cannot first develop the freedom to control our mind and our attention. For example, we may have the freedom to be happy, yet when anger or fear come into view, do we really have the discipline—the freedom—to turn our attention away from it? When a “difficult conversation” comes between your team and its mission, do you have the courage that yields the freedom to move through it swiftly, with complete integrity and alignment of purpose, values and vision?
This type of freedom is not found in text-books, business schools or most best-selling novels on leadership; this capacity can only be produced by activities that promote it, that access and engage the mind and spirit in such a way that one develops the mental muscles and habits to truly place attention where we want it to go.
This can be accessed through many activities, which differ from person to person, depending upon their disposition and interests: meditation, bike-riding, hiking, painting, writing, journaling, discussion groups, coaching, mentoring, or calligraphy are just a few ideas. They take you outside your thinking-mind and provide access to spirit, self-awareness and mental discipline.
I have noticed that leaders who ensure these activities are guarded in their day-planners demonstrate a keen and ongoing ability to control their attention, seeing situations more clearly and placing it where it is needed most. Moreover, the quality of that attention is clear, strong and, almost always, caring.
It is important to recognize our attention goes wherever we place it. It is one of the few things we actually are allowed to control in this world. As leaders, we are deeply obligated to recognize this power and master its application, to ensure it is us who are doing the leading, and not the fickleness of external change.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
During Hard Times, Lean Into Your Values
The glass really is half-full.
Hard economic times force us to look elsewhere for happiness, and help shake-us out of our sleep, thinking that external circumstances are reliable sources of security and fulfillment. Dot-com and real-estate booms lull us into a false sense of security. Fortunately, they don’t last.
So where can we look? Our values.
Values accompany us through boom and bust, promotion or layoff, IPO or bankruptcy. But having our values along for the ride has no potency unless they are enacted upon and utilized—in good times and bad. One thing I have seen time and again, with clients and in my own journey, is that when we put commitment and action into our guiding values, they do just that; they guide us out of misery, fear, depression and confusion.
How does that happen?
Values are not merely a list that you put on a flipchart or the blank spaces on a personality assessment. Values are not words; they are the DNA of a healthy human being. In order to live, they must live. Not on a list, but in ones everyday actions, conversations and thoughts. If “freedom” is a value of yours, you must make the effort for “freedom” to be present in your life. Yes, effort! Energy. Action. Not just wishing. Action around freedom might look like claiming a few extra hours to yourself, having a difficult conversation with a colleague where you speak your truth, or a meditative practice that helps you disengage from the drama of your surroundings. The common thread is action and effort. It is simple physics; you must put energy into something to effect change. How much effort? Anything over zero will do just fine.
Again and again, I am amazed at how little effort is required to move forward when ones actions are aligned with their values. Conversely, when these values are forgotten, or even worse, when one goes directly against them, the individual deflates and collapses back into confusion, frustration, depression and a host of other undesirable and unproductive states. For leaders, this has significant implications. Strong leaders that I have worked with realize this correlation and make serious efforts to clearly understand who they are, what are their values and how they can integrate them into their work, lives and organizations.
Another thing I have observed is that regardless of the degree of difficulty one faces, a little values-based effort gives them direction, hope and clarity. Creating a regular practice of sorts where daily habits and events support their values moves them into a higher state of joyful achievement. There is a deep sense of satisfaction, regardless of external circumstances or outcomes, knowing they have been true to themselves, backed by effort. Indeed, being true to ones values brings about tremendous energy, enthusiasm and resources—a keen ability to fight the fight with grace, efficiency and integrity.
Values-based action is recession proof, and positions one very strongly when external circumstances improve again. In fact, living ones values with strength, courage and integrity, seems to accelerate the transformation of external events for many of my clients and myself, too.
This is not just magic; there is a clear logic to it. By leaning into our values, we are spending more of our waking day focused on what matters most to us, therefore less on what brings us down. If we look closely, we will realize that our choices around where we put our time and energy all have an external circumstance associated with it. Therefore, we experience more and more positive, values-based, external circumstance in our day. Life literally looks good again. And in that, we come back to the realization of what life is and how important it is to be present and appreciate each precious moment.
OK, it feels good, but what about the road map?
Values have strategy built-into them. Our values are like a long-range guidance system, containing the coordinates of the appropriate target and direction while having the built-in intelligence to course-correct along the way. Values factor-in all the conditions, external and internal, not the least of which is a realistic, customized set of parameters that fits who we are, rather than some generic approach to challenging times.
We have many heroes who have shown us the way, during much more trying times than you or I will ever likely face. Churchill, Gandhi, King, Lincoln: they leaned deeply into their values and experienced all the benefits mentioned above, not the least of which was strategy. A way to move forward efficiently, strategically and powerfully with enough integrity to last for several generations or more. This stuff works. However, we have to work to make it work. It must move from hoping to doing, from complacency to exertion. All the sages of the past have always told us, we must do the work. No one, even a fully enlightened, omniscient being, can do it for us.
So during these difficult economic times, do what you can to uncover your guiding values and do even more to ensure you are living them as much as possible. In fact, when times are hard, it is even more important, so consider making it a top-priority and double your efforts. One simple approach is to list your values and track them each day on a chart, giving yourself a check-mark when you have honored them. An even simpler approach is to identify your top value and double-up your efforts to bring more of it into your life. This alone can change the tide considerably. Remember, any action creates a very different world than no action at all. Small steps on a daily basis is the key. This will create new habits and mindsets that lead to bigger steps quite naturally. And before you know it, there will be a skip in your step again!
Hard economic times force us to look elsewhere for happiness, and help shake-us out of our sleep, thinking that external circumstances are reliable sources of security and fulfillment. Dot-com and real-estate booms lull us into a false sense of security. Fortunately, they don’t last.
So where can we look? Our values.
Values accompany us through boom and bust, promotion or layoff, IPO or bankruptcy. But having our values along for the ride has no potency unless they are enacted upon and utilized—in good times and bad. One thing I have seen time and again, with clients and in my own journey, is that when we put commitment and action into our guiding values, they do just that; they guide us out of misery, fear, depression and confusion.
How does that happen?
Values are not merely a list that you put on a flipchart or the blank spaces on a personality assessment. Values are not words; they are the DNA of a healthy human being. In order to live, they must live. Not on a list, but in ones everyday actions, conversations and thoughts. If “freedom” is a value of yours, you must make the effort for “freedom” to be present in your life. Yes, effort! Energy. Action. Not just wishing. Action around freedom might look like claiming a few extra hours to yourself, having a difficult conversation with a colleague where you speak your truth, or a meditative practice that helps you disengage from the drama of your surroundings. The common thread is action and effort. It is simple physics; you must put energy into something to effect change. How much effort? Anything over zero will do just fine.
Again and again, I am amazed at how little effort is required to move forward when ones actions are aligned with their values. Conversely, when these values are forgotten, or even worse, when one goes directly against them, the individual deflates and collapses back into confusion, frustration, depression and a host of other undesirable and unproductive states. For leaders, this has significant implications. Strong leaders that I have worked with realize this correlation and make serious efforts to clearly understand who they are, what are their values and how they can integrate them into their work, lives and organizations.
Another thing I have observed is that regardless of the degree of difficulty one faces, a little values-based effort gives them direction, hope and clarity. Creating a regular practice of sorts where daily habits and events support their values moves them into a higher state of joyful achievement. There is a deep sense of satisfaction, regardless of external circumstances or outcomes, knowing they have been true to themselves, backed by effort. Indeed, being true to ones values brings about tremendous energy, enthusiasm and resources—a keen ability to fight the fight with grace, efficiency and integrity.
Values-based action is recession proof, and positions one very strongly when external circumstances improve again. In fact, living ones values with strength, courage and integrity, seems to accelerate the transformation of external events for many of my clients and myself, too.
This is not just magic; there is a clear logic to it. By leaning into our values, we are spending more of our waking day focused on what matters most to us, therefore less on what brings us down. If we look closely, we will realize that our choices around where we put our time and energy all have an external circumstance associated with it. Therefore, we experience more and more positive, values-based, external circumstance in our day. Life literally looks good again. And in that, we come back to the realization of what life is and how important it is to be present and appreciate each precious moment.
OK, it feels good, but what about the road map?
Values have strategy built-into them. Our values are like a long-range guidance system, containing the coordinates of the appropriate target and direction while having the built-in intelligence to course-correct along the way. Values factor-in all the conditions, external and internal, not the least of which is a realistic, customized set of parameters that fits who we are, rather than some generic approach to challenging times.
We have many heroes who have shown us the way, during much more trying times than you or I will ever likely face. Churchill, Gandhi, King, Lincoln: they leaned deeply into their values and experienced all the benefits mentioned above, not the least of which was strategy. A way to move forward efficiently, strategically and powerfully with enough integrity to last for several generations or more. This stuff works. However, we have to work to make it work. It must move from hoping to doing, from complacency to exertion. All the sages of the past have always told us, we must do the work. No one, even a fully enlightened, omniscient being, can do it for us.
So during these difficult economic times, do what you can to uncover your guiding values and do even more to ensure you are living them as much as possible. In fact, when times are hard, it is even more important, so consider making it a top-priority and double your efforts. One simple approach is to list your values and track them each day on a chart, giving yourself a check-mark when you have honored them. An even simpler approach is to identify your top value and double-up your efforts to bring more of it into your life. This alone can change the tide considerably. Remember, any action creates a very different world than no action at all. Small steps on a daily basis is the key. This will create new habits and mindsets that lead to bigger steps quite naturally. And before you know it, there will be a skip in your step again!
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