It's All Connected
credit: Rube Goldberg
Bruce Gibson
CoachingbyBruce.com
Some might say I am a busy guy. It’s true that I prefer to keep several big goals going at the same time. For me, "all systems go" includes a lot of stuff: marriage, family, friends, coaching, mentoring, career, songwriting, exercise, and endurance events.
As a family man, I invest quality time with my wife and children. I cannot just check the box at home; it means slowing down and really being there. As a coach and mentor, I care about the people I work with. I not only keep up with my own training and knowledge development but also focus on each client’s needs so that I can truly be of service. Since my youth, I have been physically active, through track teams in school, triathlons in my 20’s and 30’s, and Tough Mudder endurance events now. You don’t just show up to these events and go for it; a bit of training is required. Music also has been a consistent part of my life that started with marching bands in school, progressed to a performing rock band in my 20’s, and now includes two original studio albums on iTunes. As with my other interests, the songwriting and the guitar callouses do not just happen without practice.
Each of these and a few other priorities represent areas of interest that are most important to me and contribute to my own fulfillment. Mapping these on the Life Wheel is one way of attributing these activities in the context of my whole life.
I believe real growth in myself and better performance as a leader and coach comes from embracing and finding strength within all parts of who I am—a whole-self approach. This approach creates interdependency between all the different hats I like to wear. The inter-relation between my interests is not push-pull. The analogy is not of squeezing the balloon with a limited amount of air to go around. Instead, mutual success or failure for me across all of my areas of interest correlates to the energy I put in overall. The higher energy level I maintain, the better I do on everything. Of course, the reciprocal is equally true.
The word "inertia" has always held special meaning to me. I believe that the more you sit on the couch the more you sit on the couch. And the more you move the more you move. By definition, inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (this includes changes to its speed, direction or state of rest). It is the tendency of objects to keep moving at constant velocity.
credit: Bill Watterson
The concepts of resistance and constant velocity both impact how we move through life as leaders and how well we can develop leadership qualities in others. I strive to be and do both, but I must admit that there are times my inertia seems to lose a bit of its constant velocity. I also resist my better instincts to my own peril. It happens slowly until I realize that I am less productive myself and not connecting with other people as I should. As I reflect on this, I believe that moving from high energy and focused to low energy and disconnected is a methodical process that sneaks up on you.
The more I stay in motion, the more I achieve, and my quality of life is higher (and the nicer I am to be around!). My inertia is like a dance. As long as the music plays, the dance continues. Once the music stops, however, the whole process breaks down. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine with a broken slinky. If I don’t get enough sleep, I feel tired throughout the day. Then I use that as an excuse not to go to the gym in the evening. I lose a certain winner’s edge and confidence that comes with physical exercise, and that manifests itself as second-guessing in the corporate office. All of these effects start to combine and result in a mental fog that makes me less engaged at work and home.
There appears to be both positive and negative inertia depending on the choices I make. Positive inertia is the continuous flow of positive energy that keeps me in high performance. Negative inertia is the slow degradation of everything I strive to accomplish. The big question is how to sustain high performance and avoid the de-accelerating effect of negative inertia.
In their book Sink, Float, or Swim (2009), Scott Peltin and Jogi Rippel describe the ideal state of being that I strive for:
Sustainable high performance is a condition where you are highly motivated, your self-esteem is strong, your excitement to handle challenges is evident, and your physical energy is abundant. People perceive you as present, grounded, responsive, and focused. You implement sound judgment and innovative solutions, maximizing your impact on your team, company, brand, and the world. Sustainable high performance is showing up consistently with your best game on.
Waking up and moving through the day with this level of sustainable high performance puts a leader well placed to serve others by being a positive impact on his or her team and family. So with the picture of “high performance” well illustrated, the real challenge is with sustainability. How can a person in the zone become insulated from getting derailed by choices that seem harmless at the time or other gut-instinct reactions?
As an executive coach, I have listened to many professionals describe an interaction that catches them by surprise, triggers their worst responses (that’s least-preferred functions for you Myers-Briggs fans), and completely derails their self control. As their coach, I work with them to get back in the driver’s seat of their own life, to identify the physiological reaction in their gut or shoulders or legs that they feel just before getting hooked. In so doing, they can first learn to become aware of themselves while the trigger event is happening, and ultimately get in front of the negative response and reframe it into a positive choice. This takes tremendous self awareness and requires a high level of comfort with your own internal experience.
In his article “Mindfulness Helps You Become a Better Leader” (2012), Bill George reflects a time when he realized that he needed to better self manage—but “without losing the ‘edge’ that [he] believed had made [him] successful.” He continues:
The practice of mindful leadership gives you tools to measure and manage your life as you’re living it. It teaches you to pay attention to the present moment, recognizing your feelings and emotions and keeping them under control. When you are mindful, you’re … able to both observe and participate in each moment, while recognizing the implications of your actions for the longer term.
Will mindful leadership help me to turn off the late night TV show so that I can get a good night’s sleep, feel ready to go the gym the next day, and have that winner’s edge at the office? Will mindfulness help me sustain positive inertia across all the spokes of my Life Wheel? Well, it will at least increase my awareness of that specific moment when I am slumping down into the couch and remind me of my goal: sustainable high performance. And perhaps, just perhaps, instead of making a disruptive choice, I can keep moving at constant velocity.