There are many dimensions of health including: mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental and more. It’s pretty self-evident that the healthier you are, the better you can perform. Performance is foundational to leadership yet health is rarely part of the leadership conversation. If anything, as researcher Brene Brown says, being run down from exhaustion has become a “status symbol.” Although people may admire your tenacity and commitment, being exhausted is not a healthy state and it’s unlikely you are performing optimally.

As Thomas Leonard points out above, very little time is spent by most of us on our own care and well-being. Since it’s January and many of us are thinking about improvements and changes we want to make in our lives. Why not consider how improving your health can improve your leadership?

This week we want to focus on physical health. If your physical health isn’t optimized, your performance isn’t either and your ability to lead is limited by the energy being siphoned to health issues.

So how do you take care of your physical health? What do you do for yourself? What are your practices? Most people think about this and focus on diet and exercise – often beating themselves up for all the things they are still “doing wrong” or “not doing,” or they believe they don’t have time, etc.  The thing is, there are incremental steps you can take to start improving your physical health without taking on a big program. Here are some easy steps you can make today:

1. Get informed. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion out there about what really is healthy. We recommend two solid resources, Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Both of these doctors are highly educated and make clear information widely available. Dr. Weil has a great web site with a searchable database for health issues www.drweil.com He also has two fundamental books that can help you – 8 Weeks to Optimum Health and Eating for Optimum Health. Dr. Oz has a TV show that you can Tivo or DVR if you don’t feel like reading. If you do want to read, he and his partner Dr. Michael Roizen also wrote, “You: The Owner’s Manual” which has lots of great information.
2. Do the basics. An example of “the basics” is that we have all heard you need to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, (8 ounce glasses that is). Yet how many of us do it? If you can just do this piece, your health will be improved simply because you will be hydrated. Don’t like plain water? Squeeze half a lemon or lime in it. Still not good? A splash of cranberry or pomegranate juice has health benefits and helps with the taste, (provided you are doing just a splash and you are doing real juice, not the high sugar filled kind.) The basics are covered in the works of Dr. Weil and Dr. Oz we mentioned above and being hydrated is one example of improving your health without feeling like you are taking hours out of your day for a huge program.
3. See your doctor. A lot of us skip exams and annual tests we should be doing. Whether it’s a mammogram or a colonoscopy many people are not doing their “regular maintenance.” So if you haven’t seen your doctor or you have been skipping tests, get them done. If you don’t like your current doctor, ask around. Check with a friend or colleague whose health you admire and get a new physician to work with.

Obviously we are not physicians and this blog is not intended to dispense medical advice. We are simply suggesting that health is actually part of the leadership conversation and the healthier you are the better you can lead. So do yourself a favor and care for your health and well-being all 52 weeks of the year!

To move into a New Year powerfully and to create the results you want there are some key steps to take

One way to help yourself succeed is to make your resolutions “public” to others. To put more wind in your sails, promise others that you will deliver! You can ask someone you trust to be a “committed listener.” This involves a commitment from them to listen to you as you talk about the status of your plans, your struggles and your successes. It does not involve them giving advice or telling you what to do next, (unless you make a specific request for it).
Another way to succeed is to hire a coach. Someone who is trained to support people in achieving their dreams and plans.

If you are a bit more experienced at this process, take a step up in rigor and create a set of goals for the different areas of your life. Categories you might include are:
1) Career/Financial
2) Well-Being or Health
3) Relationships
4) Spiritual
5) Personal
6) Wild Card

How bold are you willing to be setting your goals? If you are completely certain you can make the goals are you stretching yourself enough? Focus on designing the most catalytic, highly leveraged action steps you can. By “catalytic” we mean that your actions produce the intended results without your being used up in the process. By “highly leveraged,” we mean you produce very big results with minimal resources.

If you’ve been successful at this level of work and/or are ready to take on your first effort at a Strategic Plan for your company or affiliation, we suggest using what we call our “2130 Partners Hot Wired Strategic Plan.” We call it Hot Wired because it covers many of the levels and topics of an elaborate plan and yet you can produce a decent draft in a couple of hours. The next pass can then be developed to whatever level of detail you wish. The key, however, is to get the initial draft knocked out in as short a time as you can so that you shift your paradigm about goals and actions as you develop the more detailed plans. You can download the worksheet for our 2130 Partners Hot Wired plan by clicking here.

It’s the time of year when many of us conduct annual rituals that may include everything from strategic planning sessions for business to making New Year’s resolutions or setting Bold Goals for 2012 and beyond

On the fun end of the spectrum, we have for many years put flip chart paper all over our walls when we have a New Year’s Eve party with a simple question on each, such as “What did I start and not complete?” or “What did I accomplish that I haven’t been acknowledged for?” or “What did I screw up that I didn’t get caught for?”  Guests write on the charts all evening with colored markers and sometimes get even more creative with a touch of artistic display as well.  On a number of occasions we have taken them all down at midnight and symbolically burned them.

On a business note, we do a similar exercise with our executive clients where we pass out a page with questions for them to fill out that explores accomplishments and failures in their businesses, practice of leadership, and lives. (We have a free download of this exercise sheet at the bottom of this blog post.)  One of my favorites is “What must I communicate to be complete with 2011 and to whom?”

A few of the highlights from these types of executive discussions include discoveries of attachments participants did not realize were holding them back, people around them who they had failed to acknowledge, and places where they were not leading by example.

We also know that for many folks the holidays can include a lot of upset, ranging form anxiety around gift giving and office party attendance to remembrances of lost loved ones or unhappy childhood experiences related to the holidays.  The latter is fertile ground for completion work.

Some of the comments we get about these exercises can be summed up as, “transition/transformation is a lot of work!”  If you are intending to be powerful in 2012, have big goals, and produce great results, we highly recommend you spend the next couple of weeks completing and letting go of 2011, (and earlier if you need to), in order to create fertile ground for your 2012 vision to come alive.

If you would like to try our exercise format we have included it here as a free download.

Wishing you a happy ending to your 2011 and a fabulous 2012!

We have long believed the single biggest key to productivity gains in our economy today is to identify and clear upsets, first in ourselves, and then in others. Over many years with our clients we have conducted a sort of “informal qualitative survey,” by asking them, “ if people in your organization just came to work, did their jobs, and went home without having upsets, issues with each other, their work, etcetera, what time could you go home?” Consistently we would hear they could go home between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. This answer used to surprise us until we heard it over and over again. Let’s allow for gross overstatement and cut that savings in half.  Even with this modification it appears there is at least  two to four hours of time savings available for the leaders, (and presumably everyone else in the organization), if there were less upsets, less confusion and fewer issues in people’s interactions with each other.  Bottom line, this means ther are potentially enormous opportunities for gains in productivity right in front of us, largely unnoticed, (or framed in that way), and largely unleveraged.

We have written a white paper on this subject which we are making available as a free download in this blog post and, (which we will also post on our website in the Downloads section), with ideas as to how you can get started reducing the friction and waste in the conversations in your organization.

We invite you to get your free download here [Download].pdf, study it, and take on the practices that most apply to you.   Please comment on this post, add to our ideas in the white paper and let us know what you think. Let’s start an open source movement for Lean Conversations!

When we talk about our “comfort zone” what we are talking about is our personal orbit, our range of personal activities. Each of us has a daily routine, a weekly routine and perhaps even a monthly or yearly routine. Generally speaking we are creatures of habit and we develop comfort zones we like, and of course, feel comfortable in.

Often, even when we do try to venture out of it, we are quickly pulled back in to it. There is a dynamic called “homeostasis” which is critical to this. Homeostasis has both psychological and physical implications and what it’s pointing to is the fundamental and biological drive for equilibrium and stability in a system, (and yes, we are including human beings as systems). In effect, homeostasis helps create and regulate our “comfort zones.” This is a very important phenomenon to understand. It works for us in critical ways. For example, it helps keep our body temperatures stable. As we know, we all have a set-point for body temperature that is on average 98.6 degrees. The homeostasis in our bodies helps insure that when our temperature fluctuates, it comes back to this comfortable set point. The downside is that when we challenge ourselves psychologically and emotionally in various ways, there can be a “homeostatic back lash,” and a strong pull to go back to our existing comfort zone until we have solidly established a new set point.

So our comfort zone is somewhat like a thermostat. Unconsciously it has been set at a particular point and when we change it, it takes some time to “heat up or cool down” to the new set point.

An amazing example of this is the research that has been done on lottery winners. It has been found that generally, if someone was poor before winning the lottery, they will end up poor again. If they were middle class, they would ultimately end up middle class again and so on. This is a powerful example of what happens when our set points or comfort zones are radically and unexpectedly challenged and how powerful homeostasis can be.

As we discuss comfort zones, set points, etc. we want to be clear that this is not a piece about people who plod along and move slowly or people who seem risk averse. If you are a fast-paced, “go go go” type of person that is your comfort zone. What if you had to slow down, be more reflective, bring your energy “down and in” instead of being an “up and out” kind of person? What if you had to take on a meditation practice? Would you still be in your comfort zone? What if you are a thrill seeker and look for ways to “push the envelope” all the time? What would happen if you lived a more mundane existence and had to experience the ordinary? Would you still be in your comfort zone?

The thing is, if you want new outcomes, bigger results and to achieve your vision are you ready to expand your comfort zone? Are you ready to alter your personal orbit? Are you fortified and prepared for the inevitable backlash that may come from inside you, but also from those around you who may feel threatened or unnerved by change? If you are part of their system, their orbit, their comfort zone, and you change, what happens to their comfort zone? If you aren’t ready to expand your orbit, how can you expect your colleagues, team, or employees to do it?

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In the November/December 2008 issue of Spirituality & Health magazine, Managing Editor Betsy Robinson’s article, “Our Common Language,” offers a very insightful summary of work done by Harvard Business School professor and sociologist Gerald Zaltman, Ph.D. and his team across 12,000 in-depth interviews in more than 30 countries. 

Dr. Zaltman and his son, Lindsay Zaltman, have described their research in their book Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers. While the consequences for marketing are dramatic, today we are more interested in how a working understanding of these metaphors will assist you in your leadership, your skill at conflict resolution, and your understanding of and ability to clear upsets.

According to Robinson, these deep metaphors are unconscious, universal, basic frames or orientations we have to the world around us.  In the language of the work of 2130 we’d call it “the instant, automatic, and largely unexamined context or paradigm in which you live your life.”  The researchers have identified seven main lenses:

1)   Balance – justice, equilibrium, interplay

2)   Transformation – change in state, status, substance, circumstance

3)   Journey – meeting of past, present and future

4)   Container – connotes inclusion or exclusion

5)   Connection – relating to oneself & others

6)   Resource – source of support

7)   Control – sense of mastery, vulnerability, well-being

and four subsidiary ones:

1)   Movement or Motion – related to journey

2)   Force – power that can compel or constrict

3)   Nature – not from humans, growth and evolution

4)   System – gives order

If you’d like a visual experience of these lenses, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2exh6i6T6tg

Two very important dimensions of this work are the emotions and beliefs that we have connected with each of these deep metaphors and the fact that we cannot express ourselves without using the metaphors. Put simply, our conversations are full of phrases, which arise out of these metaphors, and they all have emotional baggage with them. Since we all use the same deep metaphors when relating to the same situations, it is the emotions that we have historically attached to each that yield the connecting or conflict that arises from each conversation.  In our 2130 Partners’ language, this is the “stuff that fills our File Cabinets.”

Your ability to resolve conflicts, dispel upsets, and be an effective, productive leader will all be greatly enhanced by learning about and observing these deep metaphors in the situations you encounter.  Robinson offers several helpful practices and exercises:

1)   Make a list of the emotions and beliefs you have associated with each metaphor.

2)   When you are in the middle of conflict, realize that there are deep metaphors at work and the parties have differing, perhaps extreme, emotions and beliefs associated.  Find a way to appreciate the others’ basis in the conversation.

3)   Find a way to sketch out a shared vision for the parties – what would life be without the conflict?  In 2130 Partners we call this finding a Shared Yonder Star for the conversation and the relationship.  Where will we be when it all turns out? Build a productive conversation from that commonality.

While it may seem difficult or awkward at first, viewing your encounters through the lens of deep metaphors and appreciating the generally unconscious, unexamined and often differing emotions and beliefs associated will almost certainly increase your conversational capacities and your ability to lead effectively.

Here is the opening of the email: “I just got back from The Leaders of Tomorrow conference at St. Gallen in Switzerland. It was a fantastic trip, and I gleaned some great nuggets of business wisdom from the world’s best. One particular session I really enjoyed was presented by McKinsey partner Dominic Barton. As someone who spends much of his time with the CEOs of the world’s leading companies, he shared 5 insights from his experience.”

First, I was fascinated to discover this St. Gallen Summit as I wasn’t aware of it. Second I was really struck at the list of insights coming from McKinsey and recapped by Shama in her email. I found them compelling because in addition to my role as Principal and Co-founder of 2130 Partners I am also a Best Practice Chair at Vistage International. Vistage is the world’s leading CEO membership organization and I have worked with them for more than 16 years. I can say the 5 insights offered by Kinsey below are very consistent with my experience of the CEO population. Here they are with notes from me included.

1) They struggle with loneliness – The higher you get, the harder it is to find the right sources to trust. This is a fundamental reason for the success of Vistage. Having access to a peer group and being able to work issues with people who face the same types of challenges you do every day can be amazingly helpful for a top leader.

2) Lack of time - CEOs continue to balance an overflowing plate and prioritizing becomes key. This is something everyone is facing these days from the top office throughout an organization. We have found that the key issues here are in the “human dimension”- meaning that things often get slowed down between people through miscommunications, misunderstandings and upsets. This is why we developed our Productive Interactions program and why we have developed the concept of Lean Conversations.

3) Appetite for cross-sector knowledge – CEOs and companies across the globe are looking at what they can learn from industries other than their own. Cross-pollination at its best. What can marketers learn from HR? What can IT learn from sales? This is another area we find that communication is critical and is not happening at an optimum level. Often groups, teams, and departments become “silos.” There is usually a lot that can be learned by an organization and its leaders from within, from its own people. The challenge is opening up the flow for that to happen.

4) Understanding transitions – Leaders transition in and out of positions, jobs, and companies. They are consistently looking for help with these transitions. This is where a solid, experienced Executive Coach can really add value. Transitions are often fraught with emotions and complexities. Hiring a partner to help you through is key.

5) The battle for talent – The biggest competitive advantage of any company in the future is going to be people. Often CEOs don’t know the scope of talent available to them within their own company. This is a source of frustration for many. See point number 3 above. It is amazing how much knowledge and information inside a company does not flow. Again, challenges in the “human dimension” often hinder this flow. Fear, politics and other factors can keep key information like “how talented is your talent pool” from being clear to those at the top.

Bottom line, from our perspective at 2130 Partners, for CEOs to manage these top 5 challenges, investigating and investing in the “human dimension,” is the place to work. The greater the skills and capacities CEOs and those on their teams have to effectively and efficiently communicate and create results, the less painful these 5 challenges become.