Mastering the S-Curve of High-Powered Careers May's Blog
Two Business Lessons from an Olympic Fencing Hopeful
Fencing is a lot like business, and perhaps even life in general. I learned this yesterday at the British Youth Championships, watching my friends’ 12-year old son compete and listening to his coach (who is an Olympic hopeful for 2012) advise him in between matches.
The first great piece of advice the coach gave was this: “when you take the first step – and only for the first step – take it a little slower and see what your opponent does. Let your opponent show their hand. Then act decisively.” As one who tends to charge forward in full force, I found this illuminating.
The second was, “change up your approach and try to catch your opponent off guard”. Perhaps obvious sounding advice, but it helped my friends’ son come from behind to win the match. (So maybe there is a role for charging forward, but just not every time.)
As in business, fencers have to think strategically as well as weave together their tactics in “real time”. The sport requires both physical and mental stamina, and working hard year round. You have a coach and supporters on the sidelines and a referee/judge who watches and awards points. (I wonder how many of us think of our boss as the coach versus the supporter versus the judge?)
But in the end, it is all about what happens in those crucial moments when you face your competitor in what I think of as “the crucible”. And when you are in that crucible and it is “show time”, you alone must decide what to do in split seconds, drawing on the advice and planning that came before.
As with so many things in life, the trick is to be prepared and know when, and how, to execute. And to be truly effective, it is important to get in touch with how your competitors may be thinking. True for fencing, and definitely true in business.
3 Ways to Harness Your Fear
Fear /fɪər/ (noun) – a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; concern or anxiety. [1]
Since prehistoric times, fear has proven useful to our survival, both individually and as a species. These days, however, fear more often can hold us back from enjoying the success we are meant to achieve. With most of our fears blown out of proportion or perhaps even imagined, we must learn to keep fear in check or, better yet, to use it strategically.
Here are three ways to harness your fear and make it work for you:
1. Use it as an initiator: Fear can make us act and comply, so why not harness this emotion and let it help you get started? For example, none of us wanted to make those telephone “cold calls” and face rejection, but fear of our boss’ disappointment got us going, to at least make a start. Once we got into the swing of those calls, it wasn’t so bad and we even had a sense of camaraderie in comparing notes and competing to see who could make the most progress.
Once you use your fear to push the proverbial boat away from the shore and get moving, you then can then switch to a more positive incentive, which I call switching to a sense of “mission”, to propel you toward a positive goal. Using fear is about getting away from or avoiding a negative, whereas tapping into mission is about moving toward or focusing on a positive. Often, we need the former to get us moving, but remember that a sense of mission is more sustaining and therefore key to keeping us moving.
2. Use it as a trigger: Having lived much of my life with fear (of failure, of success, you name it), I decided this year to be fearless. Now, when I hear that voice in my head saying “I can’t because I’m afraid to …”, I use it as a trigger to stop listening and instead, to do exactly that thing that I fear. It’s very liberating, and I am doing many more things and enjoying it much more.
3. Expose it to sunlight: They say that sunlight is the best antiseptic, and if demotivating fears are like germs, then let’s expose them to the harshest sunlight. At someone’s suggestion, I wrote down all the things that I feared each day for a week. It was a long but repetitive list, and looking at it dispassionately made me realize how ridiculous they all were relative to reality. It became obvious how much energy I was wasting by fearing all of those things, not to mention the accompanying absence of forward motion. It is amazing how much faster I can move without dragging those cement blocks around behind me.
In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd U.S. President), “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
[1] “fear.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 17 Apr. 2011. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fear>.
Intensity
in·ten·si·ty [in-ten-si-tee] – great energy, strength, concentration, vehemence, etc., as of activity, thought, or feeling[1]
Why do some people train hard in the gym and play hard on the court, while others go through the motions? Are those hours equally well spent? Some would ask what the point is of showing up if you aren’t going to get everything you can out of it. Others would say that at least the second person bothered to go at all.
The difference is in intensity, which is a key ingredient of performance, success and, indeed, leadership. Here is my take on it:
- Focus and intensity are necessary for great achievement, whether in sports, the arts, or business
- Some people are blessed (or cursed?) with natural drive and intensity that they apply to everything they do; for everyone else, it comes down to your purpose – the “why” you are doing it.
- If you want to succeed and achieve something great, then find the purpose that will motivate you. For the purpose that resonates, we can tap into a natural reservoir of intensity to accomplish even more
As an example, my friend Susan had what she terms a “meandering career”, moving mostly sideways across medium-sized financial firms. With the birth of her first child 10 years ago, she decided that if she was going to be away from home then it had better be worth it. This fuelled a new intensity about her career, which she ramped up by joining a top-tier bank. Now, 10 years later, she is a Managing Director running a profitable business unit for that global bank (and also happy at home).
Bottom line: If you’re going to do something, do it like you mean it. Don’t waste time just going through the motions.
[1] Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source location: Random House, Inc. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intensity.)
How Great Leaders Inspire Action
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the YouTube video link that my daughter recently forwarded to me (“we watched this in class today and I thought you might like it”). Well, it turned out to be great. So great that it is worth sharing.
It is Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk on why the most inspiring people and organizations (think Apple, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Wright Brothers) are so successful and influential. Here is the link: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action
My takeaways:
- There is power in purpose: start with WHY you are doing what you are doing (rather than the WHAT and the HOW), which in turn makes it possible to attract others who share those beliefs, and to inspire them to act on this shared sense of purpose.
- There are two kinds of leaders: those who lead through power and authority, and those who lead by inspiring us. The latter is more powerful because those kinds of leaders get us to do it for ourselves. And that is a powerful purpose.
- Tapping into your purpose allows you to be authentic, and makes you a more “sticky” leader because your followers are showing up for their beliefs, not just for you.
To quote Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. What you do simply is proof of what you believe.”
Simon Sinek is a leadership expert and author of “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”. He also teaches Strategic Communications at Columbia University, and works with Count Me In, an organization committed to helping one million women-owned businesses reach a million dollars in revenues by 2012.
Who has got it right: those who fear China or those who embrace China?
Today I had the privilege of meeting with some very impressive scientists who are focused on improving the lives of people across the globe. They tell me that China, and not the US, is one of the few nations that truly “get it” as far as their field goes, and so there are important collaborations underway.
I asked what they thought of the concern expressed by business and political leaders about the threat of China potentially overtaking the US in a multitude of areas, and would interpret their view as follows: while it is unfortunate that one has to travel halfway around the world to find people who are willing to put resources behind research, ultimately it does not really matter as long as someone funds and makes the scientific breakthroughs that will improve outcomes for humankind.
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Leaders are not Colorfast
The people we surround ourselves with have a big influence on how we think and behave, as well as how we are perceived. That’s why parents care that their kids are not running with the “wrong crowd”.
The same holds true for the people you choose to work with and, most importantly, to work for or follow. To use a laundry analogy, bosses and leaders are not colorfast – their ethos rubs off on the people in their teams, the people who follow them. And it can happen subtly, without you even knowing it. It’s called culture – that “something in the air or water”.
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New Year “Swing Thoughts”
Instead of New Year’s resolutions, I have decided to go with the suggestion made by Chris Brogan in his end of year blog to identify three words to live by during the next year, or in his words, “my guiding pillars for what I will focus on in the coming year…a lighthouse for my actions and efforts”. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/my-3-words-for-2011/
For 2011, mine are:
- Fearless – to experiment forward boldly with no fear, to face situations without anxiety or worry
- Faith – to trust myself as I explore and have faith that it will all work out
- Fun – to enjoy every day, have more fun with what I choose to do, be more fun and laugh more; life doesn’t have to be so serious all the time so lighten up!
Would You Take This Job?
The following situation (or something substantially similar) actually exists in real life. How close is this to your dream job, or is it pretty much the opposite?
The Job: Congratulations. You have been chosen to start work at our organization.
You get to pretty much design your own job; it just has to fit within the broader mission of the organization and produce mutually agreed results, which we call outcomes. The outcomes need to be visible, scalable and have a tangibly positive impact on our organization and the broader community.
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Leadership in Adversity
Life is complicated. Things don’t always go the way we expect, much less the way we want. Yet, it is often adversity that brings out our best leadership qualities.
For Steve, that moment came in early October when his wife Ann had a serious accident resulting in a brain injury. As she drifted into unconsciousness while waiting in the emergency room, he created a sense of urgency and got the doctors focused on her needs. When her brain swelled and hemorrhaged, he was her advocate for getting the necessary care and procedures. As emotions ran high and minutes counted, he retained presence of mind, asked good questions and made key decisions. He mobilized his network of contacts to determine the best options for care. He led the charge in the mission to do everything humanly possible to help Ann.
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5 Ideas for Keeping Your Composure
Keeping your composure when you feel safe is easy. The question is how to regain and retain it when you are no longer in your comfort zone, when you feel out of your element. Add pressure to any situation (speed it up, raise the stakes, increase the competition) and at some point, performance drops.
Most of the time you cannot change the situation, but you can change your response to it. Learning to manage yourself is the key to gaining and maintaining your composure under pressure. Here are a few ways to go about it.
