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If your job is anything like mine, there is always more work to be done in any given day. I often crank through my daily To Do list but often have things left over that I would have liked to have gotten to but just didn’t.
These are often things tangentially related to work, like working on my blog, applying to grad school, or planning out new projects. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get it all done. As a result, I feel guilty at least some of the time because my focus is divided between my family and my work.
Can you relate?
I’ll be posting the next podcast on this topic but wanted to get the conversation started here. My questions for you:
1. Do you work at home even after you’ve left your official job at work?
2. Do you feel guilty when you do this?
3. What effects does this have on your relationship with your spouse or your kids?
You can post your comments below or join the conversation on Twitter.
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In Part I of the series, we looked at three simple ways that new leaders can leverage their own ability. Not surprisingly, each step relies on the power of other people. As Rick Warren says, “No one is pursuasive if they are abrasive”. You need others along the leadership journey, simple as that.
Today let’s look at the role of change in the life of a leader.
Change is extremely powerful. And dangerous. And seductive.
It grabs almost every leader by the heart and the head, telling him that he can do just a little bit more and just go a bit further with his plans. Change gets into the head of the leader, making her think that she’s capable of more than she actually is.
More significantly, change takes on a life of its own for the followers. Take someone that you despise as a leader. Now think of nearly everything that they say or try to do. Let me guess- you’re against all of it, right?
I’ve been there.
Our family has been a part of different parishes, schools, etc. (you get the point) in which the leadership was shaky. It got hard to be positive when another change was announced. In each case, the leader thought nothing of the change. The people though, saw every small change as part of a larger mission to summarily shift the DNA of the community.
And, as you can imagine, people don’t like to change. If they dislike your leadership style, you’re toast. Nothing you propose will seem right. Pick out blue curtains and they’ll tell you that beige is more appropriate. Renovate a community room and they’ll complain that you didn’t solicit enough feedback beforehand. And on and on. The point is that everyone is looking at the leader, asking "Doesn't he realize what he's doing to undo this community?" To the leader, he sees opportunity.
Make too many changes though and you'll be seen as a power hungry idiot. In case you're checking, that's not the ideal perception for a leader. Just sayin'.
So what can the new leader (often seduced by change) do to stem the tide of his own desire to make changes? Here are, you guessed it, three suggestions:
Take the first year slowly. This is more difficult than it sounds. When you see something that you’d like to be different, move on to #2.
Keep prolific lists. Use a pad of paper. Use Nozbe. Try out Omnifocus. Buy napkins. It doesn’t matter really but keeping lists of things that you’d like to change is the only way to get them out of your head. I typically work on my lists during assemblies, during meetings or when I'm in the car.
Lay the groundwork for change. Tell people that all leaders change things because all organizations (that are alive) grow and growth means change. Your message should be clear: I’m here to learn first and lead second. If change is needed, it will come fairly and honestly. My door is open to the conversation and I will include you to the degree that I can. Be reasonable with people's expectations.
What about you? When it comes to change, what has been effective in your organization?
Have you ever heard the expression, "You don't know what you don't know"? This typically comes up at a time like we're in, when America is prepping to vote again for a president, come November. With about 90 days until the election, a lot of pundits are wondering if the candidates know how steep the learning curve is for being El Jefe of the United States.
Lower level leaders face challenges too, especially when they first take over.
The problem though isn't the list of challenges. It's the fact that most people are horrible when it comes to self awareness. It's a fact that Americans are not particularly skilled in the art of knowing what they don't know. Most kids think they are great in math but the facts don't lie- American kids inflate their own ability in the classroom.
Likewise when it comes to young leaders. Ask a group of teens if they see themselves as leaders and most will tell you a big, whopping, "hell yeah!" Need an event planned? That same group will probably not get the job done as but a few leaders will rise to the occasion. This is how it is with leaders or wanna-be leaders: their self awareness is fairly weak.
So this is Part I in What New Leaders Don't Realize. They don't know what they don't know. In subsequent posts we'll explore other areas of new leaders and the challenges they face.
In the meantime, what can new leaders do to overcome this clear hurdle? Here are three suggestions:
1. Surround yourself with older, wiser professionals. There is no substitute for life experience and you'll want to surround yourself with a nice balance of young and energetic folks who are hungry to "take the hill" and older and wiser folks who can keep the mission on track. You need both kinds of people. Can some young people be wise? Sure. Can some older people be energetic? Of course. The point is that you need a balance of people or the organization skews and gets out of balance.
2. Give your Wisdom People permission to challenge you. I have a few folks in our organization that I call my Wisdom People. They speak wisdom into my life and can put me in my place when needed. Here's the key- you need to give them permission to challenge you and here's how you do it. Say to one of them, "Joe, I want to give you the green light to verbally challenge me in the event that you see me going off track. Can you do that for me?" Trust me, this works.
3. Get yourself a good spiritual director. I have a priest that I see every six or eight weeks. He kicks my butt in a counselor sort of way, asking me tough questions and also affirming the good things that God is doing in my life. A good director will do that and new leaders in particular need one. (I would add an ASAP to this one.) I can't imagine being a leader without having a strong spiritual director to challenge and affirm behind the scenes.
Stay tuned for Part II of our series.
In the meantime, what advice do you have for new leaders?
Have you ever wandered into the grocery store and stopped, scratched your head and wondered what you needed in the first place?
Or, in a workplace scenario, have you ever been in a meeting and forgotten exactly what you wanted to talk about with the person on the other side of the table?
The problem isn't your brain or the store or the pad of paper in front of you.
The problem may lie in your ability to keep lists and then activate their content at the right time. After all, an idea may show up at the most random of times and escape you at precisely the moment when you need it most.
In this post, I'll be showing you how to use Apple's Reminders app and Siri work together to make your lists work for you. When your lists are on high octane and working well, your team will benefit all the more.
Here is where I posit an almost heretical thought: could Siri actually manage your team for you? Could an app do your work for you? Let’s find out.
Here are the steps involved:
1. If you haven't already, set up Reminders on your Mac or iOS device. This is easy and can be done by pulling up Reminders and creating some lists that will be easy to remember when you are on the go.
2. Set up a few, can't forget lists. In your personal life, this could be Grocery Store or even Walmart. For work, I recommend lists named after the person you manage. If you manage Barbara, create a list called Barbara. If you have someone report to you that has a super-difficult name, you may want to give him a code name as Siri can have difficulty with tough names. As Craig mentioned in a recent post, this list naming can become a game (which isn't a bad thing for your productivity).
3. Try it out on the go. You can watch my demo here using the iPhone as my input device.
4. Now test it out with a person that you manage. This is where the magic happens. Rather than try to remember what you wanted to talk about with Barbara, let your list in Reminders do the work for you. As I showed in the demo, my next team meeting regarding Saturday’s event has a reminder that I might have otherwise forgotten to mention while at the meeting.
I use Siri and Reminders every day. My team has no idea that I use both applications to keep organized and that's part of the fun. When technology makes you look smarter than you are, I’m all for it.
Back to my wild idea: could Siri manage your team for you? Probably not. There is no substitute for honest to goodness human interaction and deep down, we all know that teamwork isn’t built on an app, no matter how smooth it may be.
Siri along with Reminders does a great job of keeping you on task and putting your ideas in front of you when you need them most. As a manager of people, that’s another thing…
How are you using Siri in order to get things done?
Remember that phrase, "wait before you make a change"? It's true almost all of the time. Sure, if you've hit rock bottom and things look bleak, making a life change is something that should be done ASAP. But for situations related to work, it's usually a good idea to be patient and then, only later, make a change. My kids like to watch reruns of "My Strange Addiction" and we saw an episode last week in which a woman was eating dirt. Now that's a good opportunity for life change and fast. For the rest of life's ordinary circumstances, waiting will do just fine.
I've lived through leaders who make changes too quickly. The result is a skeptical audience. People start to think that you have an agenda. They ask, "are we not good enough?" They wonder, "were things really that awful that a change was necessary?" These questions often come out in the parking lot or at the local grocery store. For the leader unfortunately, they rarely get to her desk.
So why wait to make a change? Here are three reasons:
1. Patience still is a virtue. If you can take the Survivor mantra to heart, your leadership will flourish: outwit, outlast, outplay. You want to be in this for the long haul. You can wait, really you can.
2. Waiting allows you to learn people first. Let's face it, people matter more than anything else in your organization. Get to know them, go out to lunch with them, serve them, love them. Then and only then, begin to make your changes.
3. Slow now leads to fast later. If you can fight the urge to make changes too quickly, you'll be able to make the changes that are needed but in the right time. Think of your role as playing out over five years instead of one. Think of it as ten years instead of five. How do you want to leave it when you leave as opposed to right now?
Ask those that I serve and they'll tell you that I haven't lived these principles out perfectly. I regret some changes that I made when I made them. Now I know to be patient and wait. God will eventually provide windows of opportunity but you need to wait on His timing in order to gain His blessing.
Question: which decision have you made that you had wished that you had waited to make?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 11:35PM 
