Set Boundaries

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

As we come to realize that these “interesting times” are likely to be with us for some time, we are also beginning to accept that we must find ways to adapt.

While the form that adapt and accept takes will be different for each of us, one thing is true for all of us; we must focus on what we can control, be mindful of determining what that is, and set boundaries.

When I said this to a client recently, he asked me what I meant by boundaries, here is my reply.

For those who see ourselves as servant leaders, especially those who are people pleasers, setting boundaries begins with putting ourselves first. It is only by “putting our oxygen mask on first” and following three key steps that we can be in service to others.  

In today’s world, this begins first with setting aside “me” time. Me time can include exercise, meditation, watching TV, whatever works for us to relax and recharge.

Next, it’s making time for thinking and planning, “library time” as a client of mine liked to call it. Focused thinking time is essential for identifying the things we can control and staying focused.

Finally, it’s about calendar management. We can only accomplish the first two steps if we do this one. Our schedules must have boundaries. If we are fortunate to have an assistant, we can ask them to be the gatekeeper. And, calendar management apps (I use Calendly) can be equally useful. These apps have advanced settings that allow you to set buffers between meetings, a maximum number of meetings a day, etc. Set this for yourself so that you can be fully present and productive throughout the day.

If you are looking to grow or get unstuck and cut the time to action to six months or less, there is no better time than now to contact me.

Are You a Prey Dog?

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

I had an interesting conversation the other day with one of my clients. He was comparing drive in humans to the prey drive his dogs have. Not being a dog owner, I hadn’t heard this term before. He explained that prey drive is exactly what the words describe, a drive to go after prey. And, a large part of dog training is around managing their prey drive.

It’s this drive that causes some dogs to run after anything and everything and sometimes bring it home dead. According to dog trainers, the stronger the prey drive in a breed, the more critical it is to train your dog to have what they call “a strong recall”- coming when called.

You are probably wondering by now, where is she going with this?

Bringing it back to humans, the discussion was about the human prey instinct. For those of us who are driven to succeed, what are we doing to manage our prey dog-like instincts so that we aren’t always running after anything and everything?

  • When we achieve the goals we set for the quarter, are we off and running after the next period goals without pausing and enjoying the prey we caught?
  • On a beautiful weekend day, are we focused on getting things done instead of enjoying the day?
  • What are we doing to develop a strong recall, so we enjoy the ride, while are taking it?

Elisa K Spain http://elisaspain.com/leadershipcoach/

Friction

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Friction slows things down and makes motion difficult — it’s basic physics. We also know less friction eases movement and increases speed. When things are faster and easier to use, commerce happens.

And, when friction is present, movement slows or worse yet, simply stops.

We see this all the time with technology adoption. Have you found yourself abandoning a website, because you forgot your password and the reset didn’t work? Or the website was slow and you were busy? Or, the app on your phone crashed? Or? Or? Or?

Recently a friend abandoned attending a show with us because try as she might she couldn’t get into the website to buy a ticket. I have been thinking about friction ever since.

Wondering what each of us may be inadvertently doing to create friction for our customers, or even for ourselves? None of us sets out to create friction and yet it happens all the time.

As the economy tightens, perhaps now is the time to hunt down friction everywhere it occurs – with customers, employees, vendors – and seek to eliminate it, so that we can maintain or grow our slice of a perhaps more challenging pie.

Elisa K Spain http://elisaspain.com/leadershipcoach/

Are You a CEO or President of a Privately Held Business? If you are also a lifetime learner and want to learn more about my Vistage Group, click http://elisaspain.com/impact/

Trust Your Gut For the No

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Often when we are buyers, we find someone or something we like and then work to find data (experience, accomplishments, etc.) to convince ourselves why this person or this product is something we should buy.

When it comes to interviewing for key candidates, Vistage speaker, Barry Deutsch recommends we take a more structured approach to interviewing to improve our hiring success. He recommends we start the process first by clearly defining the success factors for the role and then asking the candidate to tell us stories about how they have achieved this success in the past and how they will do it for us.

It dawned on me recently that this approach works in many (most?) situations when we are buyers. After all, when we are hiring, we are buyers.

So, am I saying no gut at all? All data? No. Absolutely, there is a gut to every decision we make, and in most situations, especially when we are buyers, trust your gut for the no. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. When hiring, it’s the behavioral questions that help us learn if a person is a cultural fit. If a person’s style, ethics or values don’t fit, it doesn’t matter if they can do the job.

When committing our time or buying a product, isn’t it really the same key question?

  • What are my expectations (success factors)?
  • What is the data that supports that my expectations will be met?
  • Then the gut question: How does this feel?

In short, if it’s not going well in the sales process, it has nowhere to go but down. If we are paying attention and listening, our gut tells us this.

Elisa K Spain http://elisaspain.com/leadershipcoach/

Are You a CEO or President of a Privately Held Business? If you are also a lifetime learner and want to learn more about my Vistage Group, click http://elisaspain.com/impact

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The Choice

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

 

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse. 

William Butler Yeats, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939

I came across this poem some time ago and was reminded of it in a recent discussion about “what matters”. We often talk about achieving balance; we perceive that it is the stress of modern times. Yet this poem was written in the early 20th century, a reminder that this quest is the human condition, a daily challenge of choice.  Here are the questions that come to mind:
  • Must we choose between success in life and work?
  • Or is it the search for perfection of one or the other that forces the choice? e.g., Albert Einstein was portrayed by his biographers as a poor husband and father. Was he, or was this the judgment of the biographers?
  • As we search for meaning in our lives, must we distinguish between what defines “life” and what defines “work” or is it possible to simply pursue what matters to us?
  • On this day devoted to mothers, what are you telling or demonstrating to your children about this question?

Elisa K Spain

Are You a CEO or President of a Privately Held Business? If you are also a lifetime learner and want to learn more about my Vistage Group, click here

It’s All About Style

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

There are lots of tools available for assessing personality style, and each has its nuance. Stripping away the nuance, with few exceptions, the assessments produce a matrix of 4 primary personality styles.

These styles result from an understanding of extroversion vs. introversion, the relationship of each to detail orientation; and then adding to this, a person’s proclivity to focus on an outcome or to seek harmony.

In my experience, no matter what your leadership role, knowing and understanding your own style and that of each person you work with is the key to achieving the results you want.

I had a conversation recently with a friend that drove this home for me once again.  My friend is an advisor to the CEO of a large company. This company is in the midst of a reorganization, and my friend is struggling with one of the leaders of the new organization.  As we talked through the situation, it became clear to both of us that the root cause of her challenge is style.  She is outcome focused; he is harmony-focused; she is an introvert (goes within to process); he is an extrovert (processes out loud).

The result: he is talking, too much from her perspective; she is trying to move the project moving forward, he has unresolved fears and is resisting.

Once she began to realize it is their style differences that are causing her challenge, she had the answer, I could see it in her face. We then moved into a more extended discussion about the characteristics of each of the primary styles and then a plan of action.

Bottom line. For me, when I am struggling to communicate, and I pause long enough to get some perspective, I’ve come to realize the answer is always, I need to modify my style to adapt to the other person’s style. Easier said than done I know, and like everything else, its a journey.

Elisa K Spain

Are You a CEO or President of a Privately Held Business? If you are also a lifetime learner and want to learn more about my Vistage Group, click here

Can You Forgive Yourself for Not Being Beethoven?

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

In interviews with Rolling Stone and CBS last year, Billy Joel shares why he stopped writing songs. “I just wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. It was driving me crazy. And it was wrecking my personal life too, just not being able to be satisfied.” That frustration led to a bout of drinking, he added.

He went on to share that he once read a quote from Neil Diamond in which Diamond said he had “forgiven himself for not being Beethoven.” In that moment, Joel realized, “my issue is,  I haven’t forgiven myself for not being Beethoven.”

Am I enough? No matter how accomplished, this question often plagues those of us who are driven. Is it the asking of this question that is behind this word: drive? Without it, perhaps we would accomplish less.

And yet, the question of how much is enough – money, legacy, career advancement, businesses, and stuff – is a personal one that each of us must answer for ourselves.

The message for me in Billy Joel’s interview is to recognize what is behind our drive for these things. And then ask ourselves what is it we truly want and are we moving toward that?

If we set high goals for ourselves, as most ambitious people do, what will we say to ourselves when the inevitable failures happen?

Will we forgive ourselves for not being Beethoven as Neil Diamond as done?  Or beat ourselves up as Billy Joel did for so long? The choice is ours.

Elisa K Spain

Are You a CEO or President of a Privately Held Business? If you are also a lifetime learner and want to learn more about my Vistage Group, click here

 

Why Do We Make Mistakes?

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

To close out 2018, I’ve asked Dr. Andrea Simon, Vistage Speaker and corporate anthropologist, to write the following guest blog, “Why Do We Make Mistakes?”

This blog seemed a fitting conclusion to my recent series on habits.

We’ve all been told since childhood to learn from our mistakes. In this blog, Dr. Simon offers us her perspective on the science of making mistakes. We learn why making mistakes makes us smarter and our brains bigger. And why, despite our efforts to learn from them, we continue to make them throughout our lives.

See you in the new year.

Elisa K Spain

You can read more of my blogs and leadership quotes here.

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Mistakes are a natural part of life – there is no way around that. There is no person, alive or dead, who hasn’t made any mistakes throughout their life. The most significant difference, however, is between those who can learn from their mistakes and those who can’t. We may try to even go as far as saying that the secret to success is knowing how to handle errors and failure by treating them as the foundation for future achievements. And the sooner people learn to do that, the better.

But before we can go into more detail about that, let’s take a look at why we make mistakes, in the first place. One of the primary reasons is that life is unpredictable, thus the phrase trial and error. None of us were handed a life guidebook on how to run our lives, and we need to make our way as we go along.

Hopefully, after a series of several mistakes, we begin to learn to stop repeating them. But by this logic, however, we should stop making more errors by the time we reach adulthood – which is not the case. The reason – life is unpredictable and filled with unknown variables. It is even more uncertain in the 21st century. Today’s world is nothing if not fast-paced and the many technological advancements made over the past two decades have seen to that.

It is for this reason why traditional business models are not as viable as they once were. Ironically enough, it would be more of a mistake in the conventional sense of the word, to keep doing things the same instead of employing a bit of trial and error as a means of finding better ways of doing things.

What Can Mistakes Teach Us?

At their core, mistakes teach us things. It is why mistakes are sometimes called life’s lessons. In other words, mistakes teach us how not to do things, and it is up to each of us to realize that. If we look at scientific research, the failure to prove something through an experiment is still regarded as a success since it shows how two things are not connected.

When scientific research can prove a connection, it provides us with some genuinely fascinating insight. Based on a study conducted by, Dr. Michael Kilgard and his team from the University of Texas at Dallas, it was revealed that our brain goes through some significant changes every time we err.

During the learning process, the brain starts compiling the information, and it becomes enlarged. Over time, it begins returning to its original size but keeps the new neural pathways that the mistake generated. In other words, making mistakes makes us smarter by creating more efficient synapses and fundamentally altered neurons.

Encouraging the Right Mistakes in the Workplace

Though it may seem counterintuitive at first, a business will only stand to gain if it encourages mistakes in the workplace. Do please keep in mind that we are not talking about errors that are a result of inattention to detail or sloppiness. We are, of course, talking about the kind of mistakes that are a result of calculated risks.

By embracing these mistakes, employees will gain the necessary confidence to try out new things and not feel bad when they don’t work out as planned. It’s important to remember that many marketers today are employing this strategy. They are continually trying out new ideas (trial and error), figuring out what works and what doesn’t, as a means of driving innovation and remain competitive in the market.

For better or worse, today’s technological revolution demands more mistakes to occur, otherwise risk becoming obsolete. Employ the same mentality on a business management level, not only marketing. Innovation has a sizable chance of happening, and employees are also happier as a consequence.

Nevertheless, making the transition from a company culture where mistakes were traditionally penalized to one that encourages them, does not happen overnight. So, what can be done to facilitate this change?

Leading by Example

In most cases, it’s not enough to send a company-wide memo telling employees that it’s okay to take more risks and that failure is accepted. Old habits die hard, after all, and your staff will be skeptical at first. To counteract this phenomenon, it’s advised that you lead by example.

It’s a generally accepted fact that employees will take most of their cues from their leaders, meaning that management needs to showcase the importance of trying out new solutions. This top-down shift in mentality will not only act as an example, but it will also show that it’s okay for others to do the same.

Encouraging Feedback and Transparency

Feedback and transparency will also play a crucial role in this transition. Your employees should feel comfortable to present their ideas and should not be ashamed of the mistakes that they may encounter along the way. You will quickly come to realize that when everyone feels comfortable to share their ideas and failures, efficiency also increases.

When people are not constrained by fear of shame, they will be more open with each other, which, in turn, leads to closer relationships and better overall communication. Likewise, the free exchange of ideas and mishaps also increases the chance of innovation.

Fast Failure

The concept of fast failure isn’t something new, but it is a product of the 21st century. The idea, in and of itself, is more of a state of mind than anything else. It is based on the idea that mistakes are natural and accepted. So, when they do happen, mistakes shouldn’t be taken to heart. When something doesn’t work as expected, you quickly learn from them and move on to the next idea.

The more efficient use of fast failure is by applying it on a micro level. So, instead of trying an entirely new idea, it’s better to break it up into smaller parts and brainstorm at every stage of the process. It increases the likelihood of success of the original idea while still making mistakes along the way.

Takeaway

The point is that mistakes have a lot to teach us as long as we are willing. The biggest hurdle, however, is to change the heavily entrenched idea that errors are a terrible thing and people should be reprimanded for them.

 

The Challenge of Perception Habits

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Recently, I wrote two blogs about habits. The first, here, was about decision fatigue and how activity habits simplify our lives by reducing the number of decisions we have to make. The second, here, was about the dark side of habits, how our response habits can cause us to treat situations that feel similar as the same, even when they aren’t. These response habits can result in unintended damage to our relationships.

In response to the second blog, one of my readers reminded me of another habit that can impact our relationships, both with ourselves and with important people in our lives. I am calling this one, perception habits.

There are two sides to these perceptions, our own and others.

First on the self-perception. Here’s what my reader shared: A while ago, I was at a party and people were talking about whether they liked vanilla or chocolate. I volunteered that I really preferred vanilla. A friend looked at me and asked, what are you talking about? You order chocolate dessert every time we go out. She was right. I had turned into a chocolate person, but I hadn’t ‘noticed’. I defined myself out of habit even though my behavior had changed.

Of course, these self perceptions can be funny like the chocolate/vanilla story or they can stand in the way of our moving forward toward what we want in life.

Similarly, perceptions others have of us can stand in the way when we are trying to change our behavior, and in fact, are changing our behavior. What happens often, especially in long term business and personal relationships is… the recipient anticipates that we will behave as we have historically. This is the other side of response habits. I want to change, you perceive me as unchanged, you respond based on my prior behavior, which may cause me to slip into prior behaviors and on and on it goes.

How do we stop this?

  • When was the last time you really listened to a family member when they are ‘behaving as they always do’?
  • What if instead of responding, you asked questions? Hard to do, I know.
  • What do you do when you aren’t feeling heard? Or feeling judged?
  • What if instead of responding as you usually do, you simply share how you are feeling in the moment?

Could these small changes in response, lead to small changes in perceptions, that then lead to more changes in perception habits, and behavior, and thereby, a more positive circle?

Elisa K Spain

You can read more of my blogs and leadership quotes here.

Another Form of Diversification, Expectation Diversity

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Last week I wrote about ego diversification. And it reminded me of another sort of diversification, that of diversity of expectations. Whether in a personal situation, or a business situation, expecting one person to fulfill all our needs is usually a recipe for disappointment.

Most of us long ago realized that if we spend 100% of our time with our life partner, the probability that they, or we, would get to have, do or be everything we want, is pretty close to zero.

And yet in business, we often get caught up in looking for that ideal person. The one who has the style we want, the people skills we want and can perform all the functions we want. This is especially true of entrepreneur leaders because they themselves have such a diverse set of talents and strengths.

Most entrepreneurs have a wide range of skills and abilities, and can do a wide range of things themselves. This diversity is what enabled them to start a business. And because of this, they believe that most others have this too. And like with any other genius, what comes easy to us, we tend to believe is easy for others. And yet in my experience, this genius is rare and unique to entrepreneurs. Most of us tend to have strengths in a few areas, and if allowed to focus primarily in these areas, we will excel.

Recently I was talking with one of my entrepreneur clients about this very subject. When she first started her business, she had a partner. They worked quite well together, each contributing their expertise to the business and most importantly they collaborated well. The partner left the business several years ago and since then, my client has been seeking someone to replace her.

During the time we have been working together, she has been focused on growing her team so that she can focus on the business, rather than just working in the business. During this conversation she told me “I am still looking for that person who I can trust the way I did my partner”. As we dug into this desire, we began to realize that there were 3 or 4 key functions her partner had fulfilled and it worked. The thing was, the skill set required for each was quite different and rare to find in one person.

With that in mind, she decided to identify the functions that are truly essential and see how they could be split up. She began by identifying the responsibilities that can be handled by current staff, what can be outsourced and what she needs to hire. Importantly, she is no longer looking for one person to do it all.

Once the roles and responsibilities were clearly defined, she realized, for example, that her collaboration need can be filled by her external advisors. Next, she identified a person on her team that can take on additional responsibilities, and she has begun to narrow and more clearly define the expectations of a key outside hire.

  • Who do you have on your team with whom you are frustrated because they can’t do it all?
  • Are they strong at some things that matter to your business?
  • What would be the impact on your business if you allowed them to focus on those things and moved the rest to someone else?

Elisa K Spain

You can read more of my blogs and leadership quotes here.