​I have really struggled through the last 2 weeks. The first 3 weeks of lockdown were not too bad. I discovered that I really like this way of working – going up to my office, being able to write, seeing my clients online, and all while looking out at my lovely garden and my beautiful view. I was excited at the opportunities that this time of Covid-19 might bring, despite the inevitable hardship. The idea of no longer having to get up at 3.45am in order to catch a 6.00am plane to get to clients in another city was replaced with the anticipation of being able to work with clients anywhere in the world, because they would have had personal experience of how a virtual coaching session can be completely satisfactory. I understood that I would have to adapt to the online world in terms of my marketing, and that I would need to work out how to build relationships with prospective clients despite not being able to actually be in the same room with them.
Then last week I just felt sad. My son is stuck in Vietnam unable to work and unable to come home. I can’t do anything to help him except send money (some things don’t change). My mother lives alone in a retirement facility and has been confined to her flat. Furthermore, she has always resisted technology, so she does not even have the benefit of video calls and family chats – and I can’t do anything to help her except call her every day. Dear friends of mine are losing their businesses. Under any other circumstances, I would be providing them with coaching in order to find ways to survive and thrive – but the current circumstances provide almost no wriggle room.
I was kind to myself last week – I allowed myself to be sad. I recognised that I was dealing with a kind of grief – the loss of all that was familiar; the loss of my familiar ways of connecting with clients and prospects; the loss of the ease that had characterised my working life. I reminded myself that it is ok to have a meltdown; I don’t have to be strong every single day; I don’t always have to put a positive spin on things. Sometimes things just suck and it’s ok to feel sad about that.
Then this week came around and I really struggled to find the energy to do what I know I must do. It felt like I was having to dig really deep every single minute of every day – and I really couldn’t find the energy to do so all the time. I took this to my regular session with my Coach Supervisor, Graham. I asked him to just coach me through what was happening to me. I came out of that session with some really powerful insights that might be useful to you.
Graham immediately connected my malaise with my enneagram. I am an 8 – a dominant driver. I make the world manageable and safe by taking charge and being in control. I have broad shoulders and a pretty thick skin; the capacity for a heavy workload and a high work rate; I am adept at figuring out how to respond effectively in almost every situation; I am most comfortable when I am in charge; being in control and having things under control is my happy place. On the flipside, powerlessness makes me feel extremely vulnerable – and 8’s do not like vulnerability at all. It threatens their sense of being capable and effective people. The most frightening place for me is where I cannot figure out an effective way to respond to a difficult situation. I realised from my discussion with Graham that this really is the first time in my life where I have felt utterly powerless. On every other previous occasion where things have been difficult either in business or in life, I have been able to figure out how to take charge and work things out – but I was feeling the vulnerability of simply not having an answer. And in feeling so utterly powerless, I was allowing myself to catastrophise. I remember using some really dramatic language around “this government having its boot very firmly on the neck of the people”, and “if they wanted a Venezuala, then this is just the perfect storm!” This is not like me at all. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Generally I am an optimist. One of my axioms is “Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out yet, you haven’t reached the end.”
Having had the insight that my malaise is about powerlessness, the balance of my coaching session was about reframing my current circumstances, and figuring out how to take back some power.
But something else happened in that conversation - I shifted my attention to my clients, who are generally executives and senior managers in large companies. Many of my clients are also enneagram 8’s and I am sure that many of them are having their own struggles with powerlessness. That sense of powerlessness will manifest in different 8s in different ways. Because I work alone and don’t have a team that I need to manage and inspire to get things done, I went into my malaise (and not a little grumpiness). But leaders of teams will often do the complete opposite. They will move into intense activity and “pushiness” in order to salvage the situation and save the day. I have clients who, through lockdown when sales activities had all but come to a halt, were in virtual meetings from 8.00am until 6.00pm. What were they talking about? And with such intensity? The 8s were hustling to wrestle back some control - whether it was control over a team that is working remotely, or control over the inevitable financial crisis that their business faces. Typical behaviours when 8s feel under threat are to dominate, confront, be forceful, impose their will and vision, be brave and forge ahead, no matter what. (But that doesn’t work very well when you work alone!) What gets lost is the open-heartedness and caring that is true of 8s when they are at their best.
I think there are 2 topics here. Firstly, if being in control is your familiar place, what do you need to do to regain a calm sense of personal effectiveness despite the fact that there is so much going on that is outside of your control? Secondly, how should you lead your team so that you create a sense of calm and give them the sense that there are things they can do to exercise at least some influence or power despite the impact of outside circumstances over which they have no control at all.
The starting point is to recognise the vulnerability that you experience because of powerlessness, as well as the negative impact this has on your thoughts and your behaviour. Consider using these questions to help you:

• What am I feeling that is so intensely uncomfortable right now?
• What are the thoughts that have given rise to these feelings?
• How am I showing up / behaving that is directly related to my feelings and thoughts?
• How is this further impacting on my thoughts and feelings?
• How is this impacting on my team members?

Then you can tackle some of your thoughts and test whether they represent some form of truth or if they are unhelpful assumptions and catastrophising. Graham asked me to reframe or challenge some of my thoughts, and one of them was the “boot on the neck of the populace” thought. Is that really what the government is doing? Is that really what Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma are doing? Then my compassionate capacity kicked in and I was able to wonder if people who had such a negative agenda would look so utterly exhausted all the time. Surely not.
Maybe these questions will help:

• Which of your thoughts are true? Which are untrue? And which do you not know ithe truth of?
• In the case of the thoughts that are untrue, what truth is more likely?
• Where you simply don’t know, what alternative assumption would be more helpful?

Finally, you can identify areas in which you can take back some power. For me it was about the fact that I know there are certain things that I must do every single day in order to build relationships with new prospects in a world where I cannot go and meet them. I must phone at least 2 clients every day, just to connect and see how they are doing. I must post an engaging article, quote or video clip every single day in order to be in front of my prospective market. I must respond in an generous and engaging way to posts by people either in or connected to my market. I think of these as my 20 Mile March.

• What do you need to do every single day in order to “impose order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty” (Jim Collins)?

The second area to think about is your team. How can you help them to also “impose order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty”? When under intense pressure, 8s forget that they are dealing with team members who are also struggling. 8s come into their own when they are able to “use their strength to improve others' lives, becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring”. Consider these questions:

• What does each of your team members need from you right now? Don’t guess! If you don’t know because they haven’t told you or because you don’t know them really well, then ask!
• How can you help your team members to impose their own order, discipline and consistency? This is probably a coaching or mentoring opportunity?
• How can you inspire your team to be courageous during these times?

During the course of May I will add to these thoughts. If you are interested, please connect with and follow me on LinkedIn or follow my Leadership Solutions Facebook page.
If you think anyone else would find this article useful, please share it. 

​

​“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. If they had been written in 2020 they could not have been more appropriate!
I’d like to share with you the story of two people – Darby and Joan. Both successful businesspeople, Darby ran an engineering business with 65 employees, and Joan was the Sales Director of a large corporate. Darby had always been described as laid back. Always calm, nothing ever seemed to phase him. Joan was more highly strung. She worried a lot; often reacted too quickly to issues without taking the time to gather the facts; was given to high highs and low lows. She was exceptionally good at her job and her sales teams all did really well, but it was always at quite a high price emotionally. When the Covid-19 lockdown happened, as you can imagine, Darby and Joan responded very differently.
In the days before lockdown, Joan found herself in meeting after meeting with her principals in the European head office. They worried about adjusting forecasts, getting deposits in before lockdown, adjusting salaries downwards for non-essential staff and making sure that all deliveries were completed before lockdown. She had no time with her team except for half an hour on the day before lockdown when she breathlessly emphasised how important it was that they make sure that they don’t lose a single sale during this time.
During lockdown, she was all over the place. On and off social media, back and forth between her emails and phoning her team members to ask for progress on pending deals and new quotations. She continued with her daily meetings with her European head office and only discovered at the end of week 1 that she could have a team meeting on Zoom. When she did have a team meeting it was business, business, business. She seemed not to have the emotional capacity to deal with her team members’ fears and concerns.
She slept badly and was up in the early hours of the morning trying to figure out how to achieve the sales targets after lockdown – after all there were only 8 days/7 days/6 days to go. She was distracted when she was helping her children with their school work, and struggled to follow a routine every day. She endlessly ruminated over “what if this, and what if that”.
Darby, on the other hand, spent some time with his team before lockdown deciding how they were going to handle things. He wanted above all else to make sure that jobs were saved and that the business would be able to ride out the lockdown and recover quickly when it was over. He and the team agreed on various tactics that they would use to achieve that, and then they talked to the wider team and agreed on how they would proceed during the initial lockdown, and what they would do if the lockdown were extended. They agreed on how they would stay in touch with each other during the lockdown. Darby made sure he and his other managers were set up properly to do whatever business they could remotely. They got in touch with all their customers personally and informed them of the plan. Darby also contacted his bank to defer his bond payments on the business premises and some capital equipment payments for a few months so that they would have working capital when this was all over.
Following conversations with his wife and children, he designed a daily routine for himself that included waking at the normal time, an exercise regime of an hour, time during the morning to attend to business, lunch with the family, household chores and projects in the afternoon, followed by family story time and dinner. He and his wife also agreed that their children would do a certain number of supervised hours of schoolwork and how they would share this load.

​
Then Darby, being the measured, laidback soul that he was, proceeded to live in exactly this way. He took one day at a time. He refused to indulge in the excitement about “when we go back in 8 days/7 days/6 days time”, and was mindful of how much attention he paid to social media. He checked in twice a day and was very circumspect about how much credibility he gave to much of what he read. He stayed in touch with his team, encouraging them, calming them down, reminding them not to worry about what would happen after lockdown or ruminate over “what if this and what if that”. When they did venture into “what if” territory he would say “Well what if that happens? What will you do?” and stay with it until they at least had some actions that they would take in the event of that “what if” coming to pass.
Of course he was concerned, as any business owner would be, but he kept his attention in the present, and paid attention to what was under his control at that time. He regularly phoned his customers to find out how they were doing and how they were feeling about their businesses, taking time to encourage and calm them in the same way he did with his own team. He used his time to learn about new engineering processes that he wanted to explore, learning new skills and working on various household projects and hobbies that he had never had the time to before. And he stayed in touch with his friends and family, encouraging them and lightening things up for them.
He was optimistic about a number of things: that lockdown would end; that times would get better; and that the economy would improve. After all, bad times always roll around to better times, and the world economy has always recovered.
This time of Covid-19 and worldwide lockdown is causing us to draw on our very best selves or risk spiralling into despair and mental illness. Never has it been more important for us to “mind our minds”.
It has been said that the mind is a faithful servant but a tyrannical master. We can see exactly how this played out with Darby and Joan. Notwithstanding their different personalities, Darby and Joan clearly had different levels of mental discipline. For whatever reason, Darby has excellent skills that enabled himself to “mind his mind”. Let’s have a look at what they are:

1. He recognises that he has a responsibility to other people – his wife, his children and his team – and understands that how he behaves will influence how they feel and behave. This is such an important leadership quality – the recognition that it is not just about how you feel. It is about how other people feel. If you want people to be cooperative, calm and thoughtful during a crisis, then the leader must create calm. Just by putting the needs of others before his own, Darby created calm for himself – after all, it is impossible to create calm for others if you are an anxious, worried mess yourself.
2. He decides what is important right now – and in the case of his business, what was most important was that they all pull together so that the business and all the jobs could be sustained. He also needed some backing from his bank, and asked for it.
3. He focuses on what is within his control and brings other people back to what is in their control when he talks to them. Within his control are his thoughts, his routine, his contingency plan (in the event that the “what if” happens), his conversations with his team and his customers, his impact on his children.
4. He sustains optimism without obsessing about what life will be like when this is all over. Optimism is the quality of being hopeful about a positive future. It is not necessarily attached to a specific positive future. It might best be captured in this quotation that I love: “Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out yet you haven’t reached the end.” So he doesn’t count down days because that will only result in disappointment if lockdown is extended – but he does speak about the likelihood that things will change and improve and that we may return to a nicer world than the one we left behind.
5. He does not allow himself to be tormented by endless “what ifs”. When my clients play “what if” I always respond with “Well then answer the question! If that happens, what will you do?” This is a kind of scenario planning exercise – when you know how you will respond if your fear comes to pass, it takes some of the power out of that fear. In fact, this is exactly the approach I have been taking with clients who want to talk about life after lockdown. We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can explore the possible scenarios that could play out and think about how we will respond to each one.
6. He sustains a routine. Healthy routines build our resilience during the best of times, and are especially important during the worst of times. Having a reason to get up in the morning, staying fit, having goals in the form of your domestic chores, projects and hobbies, having set meal times and family time, all create a structure and predictability to your day that keeps you and your family resilient.
7. He reflects several times a day on the blessings this lockdown has given – time to learn new skills and processes; time to work on his projects and hobbies; story time with his children every afternoon; time to play with his children during the week; time to talk to people; and regularly notices how lucky he is. In doing this, he notices that this time is full of gifts.

These are all skills that Joan seems to lack. She is unable to create calm for her team because she is unable to create calm for herself. Focusing on sales at a time like this is the last thing her team members and her customers need. What they need is calm, care and encouragement. She needs to take her attention off herself and focus on what her team needs from her – just that is a powerful way to mind your mind. Making other people’s concerns more important than your own will diminish the magnitude of your personal concerns.
The time will come soon enough when they can worry about targets – but right now, when nobody can get out there, when nobody is buying and when everyone is worrying about how their businesses will survive is not the time to be pushing the numbers. Reminding people that “this too shall pass” would be more useful. Joan’s attention is in the future, on things she cannot control and on needing to know what will happen – all redolent of someone who is a slave to their mind. She needs to learn to stop herself from doing these things. She needs to notice when she is doing them and bring her attention back to the present moment and those things she can control.

If you have found this article useful and would like to receive it every month, follow this link: https://www.leadershipsolutions.online/free-leadership-guide-leaders-are-dealers.
I will also send you my free eBook, “Leaders are Dealers”, which has some great hints and tools for leading in challenging times.

#Leadership #LeadershipSolutions #Management #NewManagers #LeadershipSkills #ManagementSkills #LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementDevelopment #ServantLeadership #SelfLeadership #SelfCare

In the inimitable words of M. Scott Peck:
"Life is difficult.
This is a great truth. One of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly know and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." (From The Road Less Travelled).

The world over, life is difficult. What tends to vary is the source of the difficulty. It may be the economy. It may be health. It may be family issues. It could be the internal politics of your company. There are as many sources of difficulty as there are people. 

In my coaching practice, my clients are dealing with the following sources of difficulty:

• declining markets;
• disruption to the normal flow of things because of the corona virus causing delays in manufacturing, imports and deliveries as well as disrupting access to overseas markets;
• headcount freezes because of real or anticipated economic slow down resulting in having to do more with less;
• having to shave margins to the bone just to compete (which I've heard called "the race to zero margin");
• toxic workplaces where people are constantly on edge, where bullying is rife, and where people always feel like they have to watch their backs;
• pressure from overseas holding companies because they have problems (even if your local operation is flying);
• rolling out new initiatives and piloting new business models under global scrutiny;
• having to manage teams that feel overwhelmed, undervalued, and fed up while trying to inspire excitement about some vision that currently feels like a pipe dream.

And that was just last week!

Almost inevitably, when life is difficult, we focus all our energy and attention on managing that difficulty. As a consequence, we start doing things that actually make things more difficult for both ourselves and those around us. Let's consider some examples:

• we spend more and more time in meetings that are not productive and are less available to our people;
• we work longer hours in order to meet tighter deadlines;
• we stop taking lunch breaks;
• we eat more junk and eat for comfort more often;
• we sacrifice exercise because we are too busy;
• we zone out on social media more often because we are too exhausted to actually engage with our spouse or children;
• we use booze to relax and pills to get to sleep;
• we rush from meeting to meeting, walking too fast and looking too intense or stern and talking too fast and listening too little;
• we carry with us a pervasive anxiety that just sits in the pit of our stomach creating this feeling of impending doom;
• we obsess on the bad news that is all around us which only adds to our sense of impending doom.

Sound familiar? Did I just make your day even more difficult?

These behaviours are how we respond to the difficulties that are part of life when we have not made peace with the idea that life is difficult - and what we are dealing with today just happens to be the present source of difficulty. And, as with all things, this too shall pass. And then things will be less difficult, and then things will get difficult again. 

The point I am making is that the difficulty you are experiencing now is part of how life works. It may feel unusual or special in some way, but it isn't really. And the sacrifices that we make in terms of self-care and care for others does not help us through the current difficulty - it actually makes things worse. When we sacrifice self-care we ensure that it is our lower selves that we are pitched at our difficulties, when the situation really requires the highest version of ourselves. When we sacrifice self-care we communicate to others that this is what is expected and what is required - with the result that those around us also bring their lower selves. The characteristics of our lower selves include:

• impatience;
• anxiety;
• short-tempers;
• fear-based thinking (which is thinking of a far lower quality than the thinking that happens when we are calm) resulting in fear-based decisions.

When life is difficult it feels right that we should be pushing the hours, working harder, taking less time for ourselves and others - it feels like this is what we need to do to get over the hump. But trust me. This hump will be replaced by another hump, and then another one. So what do we have to do?

1. Accept that your current difficulty is your normal for now. It is what it is. It's not special. It's not unusual. It just is. Ask yourself this question: if you knew that this situation was what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life would you carry on the way you are? Or might you think "The hell with it! I might as well take care of myself!"
2. Get some perspective. Get off the playing field and up onto the balcony and take a look at what is going on on the field. Do this with someone you trust who is not on the field too - a coach, a mentor, a friend who you know will help you gain some perspective. Gaining perspective is about:

• creating some distance between you and the current difficulty;
• getting clear on priorities;
• working out a game plan to address the priorities; 
• deciding what not to focus on for now.

3.  Put some essential disciplines in place:

• exercise time;
• eat away from your desk;
• eat good calories. Your brain is an energy gobbling machine. Don't feed it garbage. Garbage in, garbage out;
• set limits on your working hours and boundaries between work and home. For example, eat breakfast and dinner at the table with your family and without devices; work longer at the office if you must but then don't work at home; or do an hour of work before the family is awake and then have breakfast with the family;
• sleep: know yourself. If you are an 8 hour per day person, then that is what you need. Sleep is essential to your productivity and effectiveness;
• block out time for your people. Life is difficult. They need access to you;
• take time out. Find a relaxation practice that suits you: a walk in nature; a mindfulness meditation; listening to flowing water; something that will slow down your racing mind;

4. Make a To Don't list. When life is difficult, we have to decide what we are going to put down. 

• What meetings should you not go to? What meetings just shouldn't take place at all? Would everyone's life be easier if there was a Friday ban on meetings? Should meetings be limited to 40 minutes? Should you have your meetings standing up?
• What responsibilities should you delegate or just put down for now?
• What tasks or responsibilities need to be executed in a leaner, simpler, less engineered way?
• During which times of the day will you not be available to take calls?
• Is there anything else you need to NOT do because it adds little value and is making life more difficult? Is there anything your team should NOT do for the same reasons?

5. Slow down! Walk more slowly. Talk more slowly. Listen more attentively. Don't make fear-based, knee-jerk decisions. They create as many new fires as you think you're putting out. Fear-based behaviour on the part of a leader creates panic and anxiety. Your job, when life is difficult, is to create calm.

• Practice asking more questions. When life is difficult the quality of your thinking is paramount. You don't have to have an instant answer. You have to have a quality answer. Ask questions until you have looked at the issue from every angle. Then make your  decision. 
• If at all possible, sleep on your decisions. This will slow things down a bit, and will also allow your subconscious to apply itself to the issue and make sense of things in a way your conscious mind does not. Identify what decisions must NOT be made until you are sure they will result in quality actions.

6. Find moments where you can have fun. Play with your children for half an hour. Go on a date. Play a silly board game. Laugh! The release of endorphins when you laugh counters stress hormones and improves immunity, as well as contributing to an overall sense of well-being.​

​7. Make time for your faith practices, if you are a person of faith. Knowing you are not alone is hugely positive for your sense that you can get through whatever difficulties you are dealing with. 

When life is difficult, self-care is key. The tactics I've described are all about taking care of yourself - and many of them will also take care of your people. When your people are struggling with the same difficulties that you are, or some of their own, these tactics will help to build their resilience. Self-care is absolutely vital to building resilience - in yourself and in others - and resilience is what gets us through the tough times.

When life is difficult, our default is to dive into action. Most of these tactics are counter intuitive, so you won't trust that implementing them all at once will do anything except create more problems. So start with one thing first. My own recommendation is that you start with some form of relaxation practice or exercise regime - but it's horses for courses really. Just start with one form of self-care. Then as you see that it actually helps, you could add another and another. And remember to care for your team as you care for yourself. They share your difficulties even when yours are personal.
​

​Success in #20Plenty is going to be about far more than whether or not you meet your KPIs. Actually, that’s not really success – that’s just meeting the demands of your boss. Success is going to be about the commitments you made to yourself and kept. Here are some examples:

• Personal growth: did you do the work you said you would do in order to be more in control of your emotional reactions, or do you fly off the handle as badly as you did this time last year?
• Health: did you implement the exercise programme you chose in a disciplined way; did you stick to the eating lifestyle you committed to; did you kick that carb habit that was making you fat?
• Relationships: were you more gentle with your Mom? Or did you continue to be as impatient with her as you always are?
• Money: did you invest money every month, like you said you would? Did you manage to save for that holiday?
• Work: Did you become a better leader and coach for your team, or are you still telling everybody what to do?
• Career: what did you do to build your network in the wider organisation? What changes have you made on the advice of your mentor?
• Community: did you give back in the way you intended to any of the communities of which you are a member?
• Family: What did you do differently in order to make your family the priority that you say they are?

Most of us start the year with goals or intentions for the year – and many of them will fall under the headings above. But then life happens and we get busy and we live on autopilot and suddenly the year is over and oh, shucks!
If you are serious about achieving the goals you have set in these various areas of your life, I recommend that you “appoint” accountability partners. Don’t make one person your accountability partner for everything – rather use a few people and schedule regular get togethers with them where you account for the actions you have taken against each of your goals. Setting up your accountability partners involves a conversation in which you outline the following:

1. Describe the goal, why it is important to you and the actions you intend to take to achieve that goal. Also outline how you think you might get in your own way – your personal bad habits or weaknesses.
2. Ask them to be your accountability partner and clarify what the role means – that they need to hear you accounting to them regularly for your actions; that they need to get you to commit to new actions, if necessary, and that they need to give you honest feedback on how you might be creating your own problems. It is vital that you and your accountability partners agree to mutual freedom of expression within a relationship of mutual respect.
3. Agree on how often you will meet (can be fact-to-face; telephonically; or via Skype) and what that meeting will cover.

In terms of your work and career goals, I recommend nominating an accountability partner who regularly sees you in action and is in a position to give you frank and prompt feedback on how they see you showing up in comparison to the intentions you have shared with them.
Appointing accountability partners takes courage. You will have nowhere to hide! Isn’t that great?

If you are a manager committed to leading in a coaching way; a manager who has done some “Manager as Coach” training or who has read and experimented prolifically with coaching as a style; a manager who sincerely works at using a coaching approach to leading your teams; a manager who is human, has bad days, experiences stress and pressure, and who inevitably messes up despite your best intentions; this series of articles is for you. This is the fifth in series of 12 monthly articles, first published in SA Coaching News in which I share tools, techniques and practices that you can use over time to create new default behaviours that will enable you to live into your intentions of being a coach and creating a coaching culture in your team.
 
I think the most common coaching topic that comes up in my coaching practice is time management. It is a fairly broad topic, and comes up in a variety of ways that may not, on the face of it, seem as if they relate to time management. Consider the following examples:

• The team member who regularly works late because much of her work day is spent helping other people and taking care of their priorities – so her own deliverables are taken care of after hours. This person has a boundaries issue, but it becomes visible because of its impact on her working hours;
• The colleague who bounces around from unfinished task to unfinished task and has 10 windows open on his screen because he is distractible and has not developed the habit of task completion;
• The person who drops a high impact deliverable that she is working on to attend to a request from her boss’s boss – a request that makes absolutely no impact on her own KPIs, and which causes her to miss a critical deadline. This person lacks the assertiveness to clarify and manage the expectations of people in positions of power;
• The team member who spends all his time in meetings – some of which do not require his personal attendance – and then works late regularly and often misses important family and parental occasions resulting in immense guilt and a sense of loss around these key occasions. He has not clarified his key priorities, probably accepts meetings mindlessly and is also not using the resources available to him.

All of these issues can be dealt with using Stephen Covey’s Four Quadrants approach to time management (see The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and First Things First). I am going to take you through my own version of this approach, the basis of which is the following:

1.  Consider what you have on your plate in terms of the following dimensions:
a.  Importance - there is only one thing that makes a task important: there is direct line of sight between the task and your goals. Not your boss’s goals, not your CEO’s goals, not your global head office’s goals. Your goals! And this includes your personal goals, like taking care of your health, being a good parent and a supportive spouse. This implies that you have tasks that are important (to you) and tasks that are not important (to you). Now before you get all anxious and stop reading, I am not about to suggest that you will not do those tasks. I am simply going to encourage you to think about them differently.
b.  Urgency – the more pressing the deadline for the task, the greater the urgency.

2.  Once you have decided where each task goes, you can decide how to tackle them.

The diagram below explains how to identify and deal with what is on your plate, and to allocate it to the correct quadrant.

1. Quadrant of Necessity – Important and Urgent

These are tasks which must happen today. There is direct line of sight between these tasks and your own goals. Some of these will be surprises in the form of crises or emergencies, but many of these will have been coming up, so you should be ready to take the necessary action. If you feel as if you are lurching from crisis to crisis, then you are probably not spending enough time in Quadrant 2.

2. Quadrant of Quality – Important but not Urgent
​
These are tasks that contribute to the quality of your work and life. Every single Quadrant 2 activity is focused on the future.  At work these activities include:

• the time spent developing new stuff and improving old stuff – innovation and continuous improvement should keep you out of crisis management, and if you are constantly in crisis management it is a strong indicator that you are not spending enough time on quadrant 2 work;
• the time spent preparing and preventing – this is about being organised, focused on quality and on top of things;
• time spent on strategy – this is the thinking and designing work that keeps you ahead of the game and ensures that you are not relentlessly bogged down in day-to-day operational busyness;
• time spent building relationships and developing people – you do these things in the present so that you can call on them in the future;
• time spent planning – daily for tomorrow; weekly for the coming week; monthly to make sure preparation time is blocked out in your calendar.

​Outside of work, quadrant 2 tasks relate to key personal goals, events and concerns – some of which have to be attended to during working hours. Attending the gala in which your daughter is swimming qualifies; as does going to the gynae with your spouse for a pregnancy scan. Taking care of your health through regular exercise and physical exams also qualifies.

Because there is no pressing deadline on your Quadrant 2 activities, they often get bumped aside in favour of tasks with greater urgency – Quadrant 3 is the biggest culprit (see below). For this reason, it is important that you book out chunks of time in your calendar to take care of your Quadrant 2 activities. Consider these “appointments” as a matter of integrity. You wouldn’t dump an appointment with a client for weak reasons, would you? You wouldn’t do the same to a person of influence in your working world, would you? So why would you do it to your team members, your family and yourself? A commitment is a commitment. If you have blocked off time and you absolutely have to do something else during that time, then reschedule – and honour that appointment.

The first part of the day should be spent in Quadrants 1 and 2 – this is when your energy is at its best and should be used on work that serves your objectives. Having good boundaries is critical to ensuring that your most valuable part of the day isn’t gobbled up by other people’s priorities. This includes good personal boundaries – like developing the habit of task completion. You do your best work when you get into a state of flow (google it). It takes about 20 minutes to get into a state of flow – and every time you shift your focus to another task you add another 20 minutes to the task, and take away from the quality of the work.

​3. Quadrant of Deception

These are tasks that make no contribution to your goals, but they shout so loudly that you are deceived into treating them as important. It is your Quadrant 3 activities that erode the time that should be spent in Quadrant Two. It is important to defend yourself from them. These activities include:

• Many of your emails;
• Interruptions to address someone else’s concerns;
• Requests from people who outrank you (your boss’s boss or the global head office) – especially last minute requests or demands;
• Many of the meetings to which you are invited;
• Many of the reports that you compile.

There are 3 main tactics for dealing with activities in Quadrant 3:

• Delegate: are there meetings that you do not have to attend yourself? Can you ask a team member to deputise as part of their own development or because they are as capable as you of representing the team? “I won’t be attending that meeting myself. I am sending Douglas. He has the authority to engage on this subject and contribute to the decisions you will make.”

         Do you have to perform Quadrant 3 tasks yourself, or can you ask a colleague to take care of them – in which              case, say “I will be passing this on to Nqobile to do. You can follow up with her. Let me know if you have any                  problems.”

• Relegate: this means that you move these tasks to a later part of the day or you give them a lower standard of attention. For example, it is appropriate to look through your emails at the beginning of the day – not to clear them, but to establish if there is anything that must go into Quadrant 1. All the other emails can be relegated to later parts of the day. Perhaps you can attend to some emails every couple of hours – in between your more important work. And please switch off your email alerts! You don’t need them. There is no danger that you will not get to your emails – but if you have an alert popping up on your screen, and a vibration on your wrist and a ping from your cell phone, all you are doing is raising your blood pressure and exacerbating your ADD! Also please remember that the vast majority of your emails can be dealt with via a quick one-liner – most often it really is not necessary to write an email as a formal business letter!
• Negotiate: this is about managing other people’s expectations. When you receive a request (or demand) from a person who outranks you, it is completely appropriate to say “Sure I can do that for you. Can I get it to you by Friday?” You do not have to explain why. And when you get that 4.00pm email for the piece of work that is required back by 9.00am the next day, it is fine to say “Got your email. I can get that work to you, but it won’t be by 9.00am. It will be with you by the end of the day.” Again, no reason is required.

It is not mannerly or collegial to assume that someone has nothing better to do with their evening than sort out someone else’s bad planning. And if the person making the request really needs the work urgently, they can come back to you and politely ask you to pull a rabbit out of the hat. You will also have made the point that it should not be taken for granted that you can attend to last minute requests.

The same is true of interruptions. If you are busy with an Important task, it is fine to say to your colleague “I need to finish this (you don’t have to say what it is). Can we talk at 2.00?” And then be sure to be available when you said you would be.
​
Remember that the standard required for activities that make no contribution to your goals is good enough. Do not over-engineer these tasks. They do not deserve or require a higher standard. Accurate is important, but perfect is not.

4. Quadrant of Waste

These are typical time wasters. Some have to be done, like filing (does anyone still keep files of papers?). Many of them make no contribution of any kind. If you really need a break, go for a walk – with a colleague, even. That is real restoration (combined with relationship-building) – playing Candy Crush is not. Eliminate these tasks if you can. Don’t allow them to pile up if you can’t.
 
Using the Four Quadrants in Coaching

1. Explain the model. While doing so, ask your team member for examples of tasks and activities that fit into each quadrant – this will make it real for them. Also ask them which of the traps they typically fall into. Use a whiteboard or draw on a piece of paper – make the explanation as interactive as you can.
2. Once you have explained the model, ask what small changes will make the biggest difference to their ability to use the time available more effectively.
3. Now get a commitment to specific actions – you can follow up on these in the next session. And don’t fall for the “I didn’t have time” excuse!

If you are a manager committed to leading in a coaching way; a manager who has done some “Manager as Coach” training or who has read and experimented prolifically with coaching as a style; a manager who sincerely works at using a coaching approach to leading your teams; a manager who is human, has bad days, experiences stress and pressure, and who inevitably messes up despite your best intentions; this series of articles is for you. In this monthly series of 12 articles, I will share tools, techniques and practices that you can use over time to create new default behaviours that will enable you to live into your intentions of being a coach and creating a coaching culture in your team.

You Can’t Fix What you Can’t See

“Everything was going so well. I was coaching at every opportunity. My team seemed to be on board and enjoying this new way of working. Work was progressing well, and then the system broke and there was panic all around us. The board was on my boss’s back, my boss was on my back, month-end was looming, the team was like rabbits looking into headlights and I just lost it. I’m not proud of myself, but I went right back to being the manager I had always been.”

This has happened to every manager who every tried to develop a new way of leading. After all, your natural style (like your personality) is a product of both nature and nurture – on the one hand, your personality has a significant impact on your natural way of managing (nature), while your experiences of being managed will also have impacted on your style (nurture). In many ways, the easier influences to manage are those related to your experience – you can evaluate how you have been managed in the past and choose to adopt or reject various practices based on your values and what you have learned about what brings out the best in people. It is those practices and behaviours that you default to when you are at your worst that will trip you up.

There are multiple challenges with default behaviours that sit within your personality. Firstly, they are often unconscious, and you only realise you have done them after the fact – when you go “Oh crap, I did it again!” The second issue is that they tend to be defensive behaviours – that is, they are unconsciously intended to protect you in some way (and they may well have been very effective in the past). If they are intended to protect you, it implies that you are experiencing something that you regard as a threat – to your survival, reputation or status Thirdly, the nature of the threat you experience will vary according to your personality – and so will the resulting behaviour.

Personality, however, is not an excuse. As a leader, you do not have the liberty to dismiss your bad behaviour as “that’s just how I am”. You have a responsibility to constantly be working towards self-mastery, and self-mastery cannot come without growing your self-awareness, so how do you do this?

Personality Profiles and Emotional Intelligence Assessments

I love the enneagram – but that is only because I have used it for years and I speak it fluently (although my knowledge and understanding of it grows every day). And there are also other great personality profiles such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Strength Deployment Inventory, DISC, INSIGHT, and many others. In addition, the Emotional and Social Competencies Index and other emotional intelligence indices will also give useful insight. All of these provide great insights into how you are likely to behave under pressure – but the more useful information is WHY. Why do you behave in that way? What is your fear – since all defensive behaviour is, by definition, fear-based. When you understand what you fear, and why you fear this, then you become better able to modify your responses in terms of thoughts, emotions and actions.

So your starting point is to understand what exactly sets you off, and also to understand that your reactions are not necessarily how anybody else would react. They are based only on how you see the world – and other people see the world differently. It is only when you change the way that you see the world (and make meaning of the pressure you are experiencing and what it means) that you can start to change your responses at a deeper level. Techniques do not work when you are under pressure because they require you to think – and when you are under pressure you can’t think clearly.
​
Reflection

In my coaching I have found myself working with a lot of executives who struggle with anxiety that is severely impacting on their quality of life. One of the tools that comes out of the Cognitive Behavioural school of psychology is this reflection worksheet (with credit to psychpoint.com), which is every bit as useful when your anxiety is episodic rather than pervasive.

Reflection is a critical aspect of how we learn. When you have behaved badly under pressure it is because you are feeling anxious – and your reasons for feeling anxious are not the same as everyone else’s. It is really useful to work through the worksheet in order to understand what negative and unhelpful beliefs are fuelling your anxiety, and replace them with more balanced thoughts that will enable you to respond in a more constructive way. If you do this every time you trip up, over time you will change your habitual thoughts about a variety of situations and become better as responding in a balanced way to strain and pressure are work, resulting in being better able to continually grow as a manager whose default style is coaching.

References:
​https://www.psychpoint.com/mental-health/worksheets/cbt-for-anxiety/