Myth #1 Time can be managed

I’ve covered this one in a 2010 posting on my blog: You can read what the Mad Hatter has to say about time management here.

Myth #2 One size fits all

One of the biggest hurdles to improving self-management is that most of the books on the subject take a “one size fits all” approach. I work with a personality system called the Enneagram which consists of nine personality archetypes. Each Type is characterized by a particular way of looking at the world and an associated set of preferred strategies for dealing with life.

Most of the self-management books seem to be written for or by someone who is the Enneagram Archetype called the Achiever or Performer. People with this personality type tend to be very well organized and focus on what needs to be done to achieve a desired goal. If, as a reader, you’re also of this Type, then the book can help you to become even more super-organised. If you’re not, then the book is an invitation to frustration and failure – why can’t I follow this recipe?

Myth #3 An empty inbox is the sign of an organized person

To be honest, an empty in-box in your mail program is just that, the sign of an empty in-box. It shouldn’t be an end in itself. What is the point in ensuring that your inbox is empty, if you have urgent and important tasks to take care of? They need your attention, not your inbox.

It’s a good idea to keep your inbox under control, so that you avoid unwelcome surprises. However, there is a law of diminishing returns. Depending on how you tick, you may need “empty” to feel comfortable. My own threshold is about 40 mails; when my inbox goes above that, my stress levels start to go up. At the time of writing, my inbox stands at 58. Once this posting is finished, I will give my mails some attention. I notice that when the level goes below 20 that there is no appreciable change in my stress levels.

Myth #4 All it takes is self-discipline

I read an article once that claimed that procrastination could be dealt with through enough self-discipline. Procrastination is your unconscious’ way of telling you it hasn’t signed up to this particular idea. Most people have not been blessed with a self-discipline gene, so strategies that require this have a small chance of success.

Over the past eighteen months I have been learning how to use the Zurich Resource Model in my coaching and leadership development work. This blends the latest research from psychology, neuroscience and embodiment to help the conscious and unconscious to align and help you express the attitude you need to reach a particular goal. When used well, you find yourself moving effortlessly in the right direction.

Myth #5 You just need to simplify

An increasing number of books on the market propagate different approaches to simplifying your work or your life. While there are good ideas in these books, they miss the point: you’re not in a job that can be completed in four hours a week. If it could be, someone more senior would find even more for you to do!

In my experience, it is more beneficial to be clear on your organisation’s strategy and how you and your people can contribute to that; these are your core activities. This provides a natural focus for activities and a way to prioritise your tasks. The more of your time and energy is spent on this, the more progress you make and the more fulfilling your day becomes.

Question 10. What development activities have you found that work really well with clients of your style, activities they can do on their own?

My answer: The first one is to practice either Tai Chi or Aikido on a regular basis. Tai Chi has helped me a lot and I know several people of Style Nine who are positive about the effects of Aikido. These martial arts help them to improve their awareness of their body and to get centered in their body.

A second activity that works well, is to practice Morning Pages for several weeks. Morning Pages involve sitting down, first thing in the morning, and writing three pages long-hand (it doesn’t work as well, when people type) about whatever thoughts are coming into their head. Uncensored. Over time, they recognize patterns and themes in these early morning thoughts. These pages can also throw up ideas for solving challenges that they are facing in life and help them to identify and explore metaphors that unleash their power.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

When leaders operate under the illusion of control, it’s a sign that their ego is running the show. Sometimes this is a good thing (it reminds them to get to a meeting on time), sometimes it leaves no space for a good way to emerge to meet their current challenge.

However, this show running comes with a hefty price tag: we end up investing a lot of our mental bandwidth thinking about what has already happened — and we can no longer change – or what might happen – and we cannot truly influence. Maybe it would be more accurate to replace “thinking” by “worrying” in the previous sentence.

A simple tool to pull our thoughts back to the right here, right now, is simply to focus our attention on our breathing. This helps us to allow our leadership to emerge. Breathe deeply and slowly. In. And out. In. And out. After a few deep, slow breaths, the mental chatter drops several decibels. We begin to notice what’s happening inside. On a good day, we can enjoy a quiet mind for a moment or two. Then it becomes clear what to do or say. I was introduced to this technique about twenty five years ago, at a time when I had spent days worrying deeply about how to solve an at-the-time big problem. Within a few minutes of starting, I had no chatter in my mind for the first time in a week, and in a further thirty seconds, I could see a clear path to a solution.

A typical problem with this simple technique is that, sometimes, our thoughts don’t quieten. My experience is that that occurs when my attention stays with my thoughts instead of moving to my breathing. It’s like, when you go for a walk in the park and a puppy bounds over to you, wanting to play. If you studiously ignore him, he’ll eventually give up and go look for a different playmate.

What happens, when you ignore your puppy?

Photo: Felix Möckel / iStockphoto

The first tool is the Powerlessness Inventory. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into three columns: (a) Event or Situation, (b) What I felt the need to control, and (c) Mine or Not Mine?.

In (a) list any recent situation in which you felt stressed or under a lot of pressure. Be specific. “Staff meetings” is too vague. “In last Monday’s staff meeting, when Dave told me that his project will not make its next milestone on time” is specific. Don’t worry if you have lots of examples. Most of us do! This will help you to identify patterns and themes that are helpful for you to look at.

Then go through the list and fill out column (b). For example, in the example above, “I promised my boss that this project will meet all its deadlines. In addition, I feel disappointed in Dave, since he promised me that this would run smoothly.”

Finally, column (c). To complete the example: “Not mine: I am powerless over whether the project meets its milestones. Mine: I have power over my own feelings.”

When you study (c) you will probably notice recurring themes. These are topics that you can begin to address. In particular, watch out for themes that you label as “Mine”, if they are not part of your thoughts, feelings and actions. The thoughts, feelings and actions of someone else, belong on their list, not yours. This is the beginning of some important and lasting self-learning and a few steps along the path to better leadership.

Photo: DarkFrame / flickr

One fundamental difference between leadership and management revolves around (the need for) control. The tools of management benefit from control over the situation or the resources. They are very useful in the right context. This is different to leadership, where we are faced with dealing with situations over which we have little or no control. Big problems in business life occur when people insist on applying management principles to situations over which they have no control. (Problems can also occur, when people don’t make use of these management principles and tools in area where they are useful.)

This need for being in control is deep-rooted in most people and, when our control is threatened, stress levels rise and the brain begins to function less well. Our best friend in problem-solving is an open mind, one that can see patterns and possibilities. When our need for control is under threat, the brain tends to close: we see fewer options. This, in turn, can trigger panic.

One way to identify, in general, situations in which you might be attempting inappropriately to exert control is to notice who “pushes your buttons” in which setting. In the next installment, I’ll explore a more specific model for identifying issues around control.

If you can drop the illusion that you need time management, what perspective does that open up for your day? How could you make friends with time?

Photo: eBooks@Adelaide

I’ve experimented with shorter breaks and found them beneficial, both to me (I recharge my ideas bank) and to my customers (who benefit from these). Sagmeister’s talk has set me wondering, what would it be like to take a longer break … would the benefit be even greater?

Make sure to watch the entire film, the final sequence is a peach.

Level 0 never made it onto their scale, yet it seems to have been a beloved strategy in the financial services industry in recent years. The presence of Level 0  is a sign that a company needs urgent organizational developmental help.

Level 1 describes behavior you would prefer to eliminate from your own working habits, as well as those of your subordinates. People who indulge in this have no control over their time or the content of their work – it increases the chances that the working day turns out to be full of (stressful) surprises. Leaders who encourage this behavior get what they ask for: overworked, poorly motivated yes-persons.

In classical management (and the scale was written in 1975), Level 2 is also a candidate for banning. Oncken & Wass recommended that managers never indulge in this behavior, since it can surrender control over the content of one’s job. However, understanding of leadership has developed over the past thirty years, so we need to be careful here. An unthinking, “what do I do now, boss?” deserves to disappear. However, thoughtful questioning to elicit understanding of a problem and to identify possible next steps belongs in any leader’s toolkit.

Many managers, when they first see this scale, state that it’s impossible to get subordinates even to Level 3. In practice, it’s not too difficult: As long as you have basic mutual respect, you only need to make a habit of asking people for their suggestions to get them into the habit of bringing suggestions to you, and not just a problem for you to solve. They’ll get the hang of it and save themselves the routine question.

As trust and understanding of how each other works develops, subordinates will naturally arrive at Levels 4 and 5 over time. Part of this development involves exposing people to your thinking processes in decision-taking and values, so that they have a good idea what’s expected; they won’t get it by osmosis or telepathy.  I recently spoke with one senior manager who was frustrated that his secretary was not screening his e-mails adequately. It turns out, he expected her to know which ones deserved his attention, which ones should be diverted to other people, and which ones binned. He has now scheduled some time with her, so that they can go through his in-box together and she can understand how he would like her to deal with his mails.

At first, many people don’t see a problem with Level 6. Indeed, when managers are suffering from data overload (too many mails, messages, meetings), it can be tempting to allow staff to drift towards Level 6. However, you lose the overview of what’s going on, which impairs your ability to lead. One client, Director of Sales & Marketing, was delighted about how much initiative his staff showed.  It was only when his department began to miss its targets that he realized his sales team was neither sharing important customer information with him nor each other. During their next meeting, they looked together at how their enthusiasm and independence was turning counterproductive, and moved back to Level 5. Sales improved in a tough market.

Where are you – or your staff – on this initiative scale?

“Should you …”: My life used to be full of shoulds, each of them generating another chunk of guilty conscience, when I wasn’t able to live up to the Should. Then I stumbled upon Virginia Satir’s wonderful little book Making Contact
. It opened my eyes to how full of  Shoulds my life had become and introduced me to the choicemaking game of replacing each Should by a Could and testing out the new question. So,  “Could you be working on vacation?” Now I have an element of choice. I can choose to work, or not, without suffering from a guilty conscience.

Where does ‘work’ stop and ‘life’ begin?

When are you ‘on’ and when are you ‘off’?

I talked about the first of these two questions  yesterday, so just scroll down a few lines. The second is a great question when looking for life balance. The When is not so important, just as long as there are both off and on phases. ‘On’ can be seductive, it often provides a rush. However, with too much ‘on’ and, over time,  the body eventually responds less well to stressful situations. We also need our ebb and flow.

Work-Life Balance is a failed term. It suggests that work is somehow not a part of life and we need to get some form of balance between these two concepts. That’s old dualistic thinking at its worst. We need to recognise that work is an important part of life, but just a part. What we need is to find a fluid and dynamic balance between the different parts, so that life is enriched and enriching.

From Barry’s article:

Way #1.Work as long as hard as you want during the day. Get to work early, leave late, but when you go home, leave your work at work.

Obviously, the author of Way #1 has never met my iPhone. We live in a 24/7 world. Get used to it.

One of my former bosses used to practice this pretty well; then again, few people had mobile phones in those days. A statement like Way #1 can push buttons – it’s useful to pause for a moment and reflect which ones. It may give you a hint about some aspect of life that is not getting enough attention right now.

Over time, for well-being and health, we need to ensure we pay attention to different facets of our lives. More iPerson and less iPhone. The level of attention will change from month to month, day to day, moment to moment, depending what is going on. A basic collection of facets looks like this:

• work
• primary relationship
• kids
• family of origin
• friends
• social
• hobbies
• self

As I wrote the list, I imagined some people thinking, “oh no! Even more things I need to schedule or put on my ToDo list!” It doesn’t have to be like that. In a given phase of life the relative importance between these facets changes. Not all will be present in any given week. It’s when they’re not present, week after week, that our well-being suffers.

“Only connect” is not the answer. Neither is regimenting life  strictly. Many self-organization systems like Getting Things Done recommend a once-per-week review of all ToDos and projects in life. I wouldn’t suggest turning my partner, family, friends, hobbies and self into a project. It is worth spending a few minutes during the review to notice if you’re satisfied with the level of attention each has received in the past week. If, over time, the answer is “no”, it’s a sign you’re drifting from your balance point.

The reasons for drift are often linked to our personality structures. For example, in Enneagram terms, many Type Three’s focus on success at work, and the other facets suffer. Often, Type Two’s focus on the relationships in their lives (relationship, family, friends). Many One’s tell me they’re driven by a sense of duty to ensure that all tasks (work and home) are done, so any left-over time can be used for hobbies and self (not that there ever is left-over time!). Sometimes, Types Six or Eight focus on social justice, often at the cost  work and family. And we Type Nines just sometimes forget to focus at all.

It’s important just to notice the drift – this may be enough to get back on track. Remembering to say “no” more often in certain areas of life may be needed. Or maybe you could benefit from a couple of hours with a coach.

What helps you keep your life balance?