Move out of your comfort zone.  You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.  ~Brian Tracy

What is a comfort zone?  I discovered a number of similar definitions, and here’s the one I like the best.  “A comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance.”

For most of us when we think of our comfort zone we tend to think of our routines, what’s familiar, what we know how to do, etc.  I want to stretch that thinking a bit and focus on our “behavioral state” as the definition suggests.  One of the behavioral states that I frequently observe that causes leaders trouble is a dimension that ranges from being task-oriented to relationship-oriented.  We all fall along that dimension somewhere and it’s an “anxiety-neutral condition,” or where we feel most comfortable.

Leaders who are highly task-oriented are great at giving instructions, directing, telling people what they need to do.  Leaders who are highly relationship-oriented are great at inspiring others, creating dialogue, encouraging people regarding how they need to act.

If you find yourself at one end of that dimension (task or relationship), and you want to grow as a leader, then you need to be willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable and adapt to those who are at the other end of that dimension.  Great leaders know how to be both task-oriented and relationship-oriented.

I’ve had numerous leaders dispute this suggestion saying that leaders need to be genuine and if they try to be something they naturally are not, then they aren’t being genuine.  Let’s look at that word: genuine.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means sincere.  I would argue that any leader who is trying to adapt their behavioral style to those they are leading is being quite sincere.  In other words, I don’t buy this rationale for not going out of your comfort zone.

If you’re highly task-oriented and are willing to go out of your comfort zone try this:

• Take the time to ask someone a personal question, in other words, be more socialable than you typically would be.
• When someone describes a challenge, frustration, or problem, instead of immediately going into problem-solving mode, empathize first. In other words, acknowledge how that person feels about the situation before you make suggestions how to fix it.

If you’re highly relationship-oriented and are willing to go out of your comfort zone try this:

• When addressing a problem or challenge, start with the facts instead of starting with how it feels.
• Instead of being quick to accept ideas, question and challenge them first.

As Brian Tracy told us, “You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable…”

When you live surrounded by clutter, it is impossible to have clarity about what you are doing in your life.  ~Karen Kingston

It’s spring, which means it’s time to clean and clear the clutter.  The quote today is from a Feng Shui expert and refers to our physical clutter. I think there are at least three ways that we can use physical clutter as a metaphor for organizational clutter that leaders can clear and create healthier organizations.

1. Beginning with Kingston’s quote, leaders many times create a lot of organizational clutter that makes it difficult, or even impossible, for employees to have clarity of purpose and priorities. This kind of clutter could include not prioritizing enough.  Employees are told that everything is a priority, so really that means nothing is a priority.  Consequently, employees make their own individual prioritization decisions.  Then leaders wonder why efforts aren’t more in sync across the organization and nothing seems to be moving forward.
2. Another physical organization expert, Cynthia Kyriazis, said “clutter is symptomatic of delayed decision making.” Also very true in organizations.  Clutter, like layers upon layers of bureaucracy that create bottlenecks, and decisions take far too long to get made.  Ask yourself, in your organization are decisions being made at the lowest level possible, or do many decisions have to make their way up several layers before they can be made?
3. Author Gretchen Rubin, who is on a continual quest for simplicity, said “If you’ve had something for more than six months, and it’s still not repaired, it’s clutter.” How many processes or systems are in your organization and haven’t been “working” for more than six months?  Those processes and systems have become organizational clutter.

In his book The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni identifies five attributes that constitute a healthy organization: minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover.  Sounds to me like these organizations are healthy because the leaders have made intentional and deliberate efforts to clear the organizational clutter.

It’s spring!  What clutter do you need to clear in your organization?

Effective leaders have the ability and discipline to weed through busy activities, identify how they can make the best contribution to the purpose of the organization, and then focus their time, energy, and resources on that contribution.  ~Kathryn Scanland

We all bemoan and complain about not getting enough done, not making it through our to-do list, and not having enough time.  It’s not difficult in nearly any job, profession, or position to create busy work and maintain a high level of activity.

Effective leaders have the ability and discipline to weed through busy activities, identify how they can make the best contribution to the purpose of the organization, and then focus their time, energy, and resources on that contribution.  In my work I’ve run into numerous clients who have ideas, many of them good ideas; however, they frequently don’t know how those ideas will contribute to the purpose of the organization.  As I frequently say, it’s an idea without a strategy.

It can be as simple as creating a brochure highlighting customer success stories, but not knowing how it will be used or what results might be achieved by having this brochure.  Buying a new software application or program to organize contacts, but not knowing what results we might hope for given this new way of organizing contacts.  Even acquiring another organization, but not having identified our expectations for what we’ll be able to achieve with this specific organization that is now a part of our larger organization.

Until we identify what contributions we’re making by all this activity, all we’re really doing is staying busy, but not necessarily contributing to the purpose of our organization.

In The Essential Drucker, Peter Drucker provides an illustration.

Nurse Bryan was a long-serving nurse at a hospital.  She was not particularly distinguished, had not in fact ever been a supervisor.  But whenever a decision on a patient’s care came up on her floor, Nurse Bryan would ask, “Are we doing the best we can do to help this patient?”  Patients on Nurse Bryan’s floor did better and recovered faster.  Gradually over the years, the whole hospital had learned to adopt what came to be known as Nurse Bryan’s Rule; had learned, in other words, to ask, “Are we really making the best contribution to the purpose of this hospital?”

Making the best contribution to the purpose of their organization separates the effective leaders from the leaders who are just busy people.

We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.  ~Jim Collins

I think Jim Collins’ work (author of Good to Great) is reflected in not only the talent, but the life of the extraordinary cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.

Last week I had the privilege of seeing Yo-Yo Ma in concert.  This was the second time for me and he never disappoints.  Three words that describe Ma are also leadership traits Collins’ uses to describe great leaders: focus, passion, and humility.

FOCUS.  When being interviewed, Ma said, “I can be incredibly focused, and you know, incredibly willful.”  This incident in Philadelphia describes just how focused he can be.

Once, while playing in Philadelphia, his chair tipped over.  As Ma fell backward, the audience gasped.  A musician behind Ma caught him just in time.  Amazingly, Ma kept playing through all of it and sat back down without missing a beat.

Collins said “Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.”

PASSION.  Ma said, “Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks.”

If you’ve read Collins’ book, then you’re familiar with the hedgehog concept.  The point where your answers to three key questions overlap.  What are you deeply passionate about, what can you be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine.  Passion is something that Ma understands and clearly demonstrates when he performs.  It’s also quite evident that he is deeply passionate.  It goes without question that he’s the best in the world.

HUMILITY.  In a biography of Yo-Yo Ma by Susan Ashley he is described as “a true superstar, but one would never know it upon meeting him.  Ma is soft-spoken and humble.”

This was something I witnessed last week.  I’ve been to many concerts, hundreds, and what I saw Ma do is extremely rare.  When his featured cello concerto was finished, the audience immediately stood to their feet and he took a short and modest bow. Then, he walked over to the first-chair cellist and gave him a big hug.  He proceeded to very personally greet each of the other cellists.  Finally, he stepped back with the remaining musicians and included them in receiving the applause.  It wasn’t about him; it was about the music.  Just as Collins’ said, “their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work, rather than for themselves.”

Ma being interviewed: “People will ask, ‘Are you famous?’ And I always answer, ‘My mother thinks so.'”

When you can make the connection between passion and mission, you can truly propel your organization to a new level of performance.  ~Jim Whitehurst (President and CEO of Red Hat)

1: When employees come with an idea that steps outside of their job description boundaries, the first thing you tell them is what’s wrong with it, why it’s a bad idea, or it’s a waste of time. You don’t even ask a question to better understand their thought process, their rationale, or to find that nugget of gold that might be hiding in their idea.

I see this frequently.  Emerging leaders are trying to be innovative, trying to be forward-thinking, and they aren’t going to get it right every time or come up with life-altering ideas.  That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be praised for their willingness to think out of the box, move out of their comfort zone, or challenge the status quo.

Instead: to fuel passion, appreciate employees’ action, even if the idea itself may not have merit, right now.

2: You aren’t giving emerging leaders space to spread their wings. You tell them they are an emerging leader, but then there’s no career path identified, no mentoring or coaching.  In other words, nothing changes except they’re being referred to as an “emerging leader.”

Instead: to fuel passion, really coach and mentor.  Give them projects that stretch their abilities, come alongside them and coach them to success.  Let them come alongside you.  I remember hearing a leader once say that he made it a practice to never travel alone.  What he meant by that was he always brought an emerging leader with him to meetings and on trips so they could be gaining experience and learning, first-hand.

3: You’ve become more focused on the “margin” than the “mission.”

Every organization has financial demands.  When the focus of an organization (not-for-profit and for-profit) skews in the direction of finances over purpose, passion quickly fades.  When passion fades, so does performance.  This doesn’t mean leaders should not be concerned about finances, but they should be concerned if employees are hearing them talk about money far more than mission.

Instead: to fuel passion, highlight mission moments.  Always start your communication with the mission first, and the finances will follow.

Jim Whitehurst said, “It’s my belief that every organization has the potential for world-changing impact.  The role of a leader is to foster passion around that impact and to keep that passion alive by reinforcing it every day.”