Before we leap into Section 3, working with the Source of your performance--you, a little context is warranted. This is probably the least understood area of performance, and the most important. To provide full context would fill a multiple day workshop, a book or books. I seek to give you the brass tacks of it in one post.
If you and I sat down and honestly looked at your current level of performance in producing results, I would help you explore, initially, three areas. 1) Whether you know the results you want to produce, and whether you are producing them. 2) Whether you follow effective processes and have effective systems to produce results. 3) Whether your relations with people are effective in producing results.
Ponder on that. Is it the results you produce, the way that you produce them, or the way you relate with others while producing results that would have the greatest impact on taking your self to the next level of leadership? I am choosing my words very carefully here. And I'd like you to re-read that question now. Either write down the first thing that comes to your mind, or say it out loud.
Let's take those three items in order.
Is it the results you produce? In this area, the first thing you need is to know what results to produce. As silly as that sounds, many executives and leaders I know are not crystal clear on that. I'm serious. I mean, they know generally, but the lack of specific definition is amazing. That is why, to this point, much of this exercise has been about getting you to define--measurably--what results you are going to produce. With that commitment, followed by the clarity you will receive in pursuing and producing those results, the results you want to produce will become evermore clear. The magic here is being specific, committing, and doing.
Is it the way you produce results? Many leaders produce results, but do so very inefficiently. They burn inordinate amounts of resources--time, money and people. This, in effect, puts a "lid" on their performance. If you are not continually honing your systems, structures and approaches, you automatically place a lid on your performance.
The second part of your plan, Initiatives, is designed to address the way you produce results in several ways. First, what most people write as their Initiatives are the things they need to do to specifically produce the Results in section 1. Sometimes, the initiatives are about putting in place new systems, structure, approaches or whatever. Second, what you will see, if you follow this all the way through, is that I am going to give you an approach to getting those initiatives done. Third, as your last initiative, I asked you what you could do to improve your ability to get all those initiatives and results done.
That last initiative is very important, and I think I gave it short shrift. That last initiative, the one intended to improve your overall capacity to produce results, is a very important one. It is often something very practical (like spending the first hour of every day taking action on my single most important result or initiative), yet it brings us up against something very personal.
What that right action brings us up against is a limiting behavior that we know is counterintuitive and counter productive. Yet we do not do the new behavior and we continue to old, counterproductive behavior even though it defies all logic. Why? Because it is psycho-logic, that's why. We are committed to doing one thing (improve performance), but we are equally committed to something else that nullifies the former. We have one foot on the gas and the other on the brake, for goodness sakes. All of us.
The counter-commitment, the having the foot on the brake, arises from an inner, often unconscious, anxiety. That anxiety can be so strong that it makes us sometimes feel that if we were to do that right, logical, productive thing (like spending that first hour doing what's most important), that we'd jump out of our skin, or, worse yet, life as we know it would end. Know that feeling? It's a bit of a buzz killer when it comes to doing that new, more productive, more logical thing, isn't it? And the fact that leaders have no effective way to deal with it is the single most important reason leaders hit the lid (a.k.a. the Peter Principle) and the reason why leaders underperform as mentors (thereby supporting others in reaching and then being constrained by their own lids).
We will get to how to deal with that, because there is a way to do so. And it is neither complicated nor easy. Anyone can do it. And there are only four steps to it. But that inner anxiety is so strong, that even a good, effective, proven process for dealing with it is no match for it if it is not an act of survival to do it. We will get to that. But not now.
For now I want you to review that last initiative, the one that is intended to improve the process, structure or means by which you produce results. Make sure it is a good one. Make sure it has leverage. Make sure it is something you can do methodically and systematically to produce better, more consistent results week in and week out. You probably already know what it is, because it is something you are consistently telling yourself you should do, but you do not. You've got excuses not to, and the excuses win. I know. It happens to me, too.
For me, this one thing is doing David Allen's weekly planning process (two hours a week), followed by spending 30 minutes per day, first thing in the morning, reviewing the priorities I set in that 2 hours of weekly planning, and mapping out the next action to achieve those priorities. That's only 10% of a 40 hour work week (even less of a 50). And my performance goes up exponentially. In other words, the ROI on that time is staggering. Yet it is so hard to do. But each time I do it, the grip of my inner anxiety loosens.
Let's come back to point. I've covered the first item--the results you produce. I've covered the second item in some detail--the processes you use to produce results. And I've asked you to verify that your last initiative, is a bull's eye in terms of addressing the single most important thing you could systematically begin doing to improve the way you produce results. That leaves the third item.
Is it the way you relate to others in producing the results? This is a very hard area for leaders to grasp. It becomes very personal, and there usually is a pretty significant blind spot here. And it is so hard to see because it is so painful to see it. We craft an immunity system, in fact, to protect us from seeing it. And that immunity system includes rationalizations and justifications for continuing to relate to others in ways that aren't exactly kosher for us and for them.
Where we are headed with Section 3, is to address that specific area--the way we relate with others. Now, you may say, what does that have to do with Source, with changing myself? Everything. You see, it is nigh impossible for you to start by working directly with your own self because we all lack the sobriety to see ourselves clearly. Therefore, the most practical approach is also an indirect approach. The indirect approach is how we relate to others. If we give our all to working with that--how we relate to others--at some point it will dawn on us that we are actually working out way back to the Source. And to the way we relate with ourselves.
Okay. That is the context I think you need. Where we are headed in the next post is into Section 3 of your one pager, towards understanding the Source of your performance, who you really are, by way of looking at how you need to change the way you work with others in producing the results you produce.
It is the key to success. It is, in fact, emotional intelligence for leaders made practical.
