Are You Activated Enough?

What do I mean by activated? Are you engaged with your work, with your life? Are you clear on what you are doing and why? Do you feel energized by what you are doing and who you are being?

If you are underactivated then there is no juice, you are not energized. You may even be depressed, cynical or checked out. This state doesn’t get you moving.

If you are overactivated, you may be overwhelmed, too reactive, scattered, distracted or unfocused. This state may or may not get you moving, but usually doesn’t result in a lot of progress against your dreams or goals.

What does it mean for you to just be activated, and what is enough? In general, I think about this word in terms of being an actively engaged leader. And these days, I think about it in terms of how our country’s climate is effecting people.

We are living in very polarized, charged times. People who have never been politically active, are now.

I, myself, have always had causes I believe in, but never considered myself an activist… until recently. Yes, I was one of 400,000 people who marched in New York City on January 21^st. I marched for women’s rights and human rights. I marched to represent what our country stands for – as the photo above shows – lady liberty. Or, more accurately, I stood for rights as we didn’t do much moving.

I feel it is a time when I cannot be quiet. It is a time that calls for strong, compassionate, and persistent leadership. Not only did the record number of marchers globally amaze me, but the fact that it was largely peaceful. We have a long way for us to unite as a nation, and truly listen and understand the polarizing viewpoints, but I was heartened, energized and inspired by the atmosphere in New York that day.

Since, there have been many decisions made that has the country in a spin. It requires you not get too triggered or overactivated, but stay activated – engaged, curious and in dialogue with a beginners mind. This is challenging when you feel your rights or our democracy is threatened.

This word, “activated” is so powerful. What gets you charged up and able to speak up, stand up, and with an open ear?

Where are you active, proactive or reactive? What serves you in these heated, uncertain times?

© Copyright 2017 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.

Creating Space. Good-bye 2016. Hello 2017.

Creating space is my mantra for 2017, to ensure I have a joyous, thriving year, regardless of what is going on around me.

This past month, my email inbox has been flooded with people trying to thank me, sell me and give me messages over the holidays and for the coming year.

I waited until the end of the year to publish my message.

My message is a simple, twofold one:

First, Thank you for being part of my professional world. You are either a colleague, a client, a friend, an interested person or a combination of some of the above.

My world is richer because you are in it. My hope is that I have, and can continue to create value for you – to provide provoking questions, thoughts and support that spur you on to grow personally and professionally.

Second, my invitation for you today is to find the time to proactively create space in your life this next year. By this, I mean space in the abstract and practical sense. This is a practical and spiritual practice:

• Create space in your calendar – time when you have nothing scheduled. Time when you DO nothing.

• Create space in your to do list – find time to meander through a task everyday without the pressure of “getting it done.” Relish the task itself.

• Create space in your goals – don’t overstretch yourself that you exhaust yourself or everyone around you.

• Create space in your physical surroundings – declutter and only keep the bare essentials of what you need or use or that which makes you feel joy and love.

• Create space in your relationships – allow silence and time to just be with another and observe and listen more to what they need.

• Create space in your emotional life to allow for what you feel to emerge and be attended to.

• Create space for what is important to you, really.

• Create space for personal, private time with yourself to tune into what is happening within you. I promise this will enable you to be more present to what is happening around you.

My primary practice this year will be to create space to allow myself more room to breathe – literally and figuratively. This requires that I also practice trust and the art of receiving.

By removing things, people, tasks, goals from my life that don’t serve my highest good, I trust I will have exactly what I need. I am entertaining the thought that less is more, truly.

I will create room to receive that which better serves me. When I am served, I can better serve. When I serve, I receive. It’s a beautiful circular garden that needs mindful tending to, to fully blossom.

This mentality requires that I truly believe I am enough and have enough for a thrillingly thriving life.

Will you join me in this practice of creating space? Where will you start? What is getting thrown in the trash today?

© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.

If you are a high achieving leader, you love nothing more than a meaty challenge. How do you find your sweet spot of being energized by a challenge that will stretch, and maybe tax you, but not overly so? It’s in overcoming our greatest challenges that we can feel really alive and accomplished.

Yet there is a fine line between feeling the tension of a challenge, getting out of your comfort zone, and feeling the stress, pressure or overwhelm of being stretched beyond what you think you can do.
Do you have a sense of where this fine line is? Sometimes your anxiety can fuel you to seek alternative ways to overcome obstacles, and sometimes it can disable you.

If you are in tired, anxious, burnt out mode, you may have crossed the line.

A key leadership competency is as basic as taking a pause, deep breath, and to qualify yourself in any given moment. This is the first step required to recalibrate your frame of mind and be able to push past and through these feeling states. And yet it is the very feelings of passion, desire and drive that can propel you to proactive action.

Here is an exercise you can use in the moment of recalibration to presence yourself so you can think more clearly:

Bring the tips of your fingers together such as presented above. Close your eyes. Take an inhale breath through your nose, counting to four. Suspend your breath for a four count. Exhale through your nose for a four count. Increase the time as your lung capacity allows. Continue this cycle for 60-90 seconds.

Notice any sensations in your body. Notice your thoughts. Pay attention to the quality of your thoughts and the tension in your body. Does this challenge feel to be the right one – you are just growing and stretching? Do you sense excitement, love and passion? Or are your feelings still tense and not good? Is this challenge too much – beyond your capacity to manage?

If the former, how do you move forward knowing this moment will pass?

If the latter, what does it mean for you to admit this to yourself? What then must you do?

© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.
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Susan is an executive coach and leadership & organization effectiveness consultant. She also teaches yoga and meditation – tools to keep one sane in insane times. She helps professionals step up to their fullest leadership and growth potential. At times this means overcoming their greatest fears or trauma and getting out of their own way to get important stuff accomplished. Please contact her for a complimentary strategy session. www.sagelead.com.

Leadership Insights From The Big Chill

No, I’m not talking about the movie. I am referring to my “polar bear” dip in the video above. I was at a weekend intensive training class being held at a retreat house on Long Island Sound in Connecticut. The air temperature was about 50 degrees and the water was colder.

This class was a second level training for teachers of Kundalini Yoga on Stress & Vitality. My core business is as a leadership coach and consultant. My lifestyle is as a yogi and I also teach yoga and meditation. I incorporate these teachings into my coaching and consulting practice as appropriate to help leaders be more present, aligned within themselves, intuitive, clear thinking and confident.
On this particular weekend we were all laughing when we arrived as the organizers in their logistics note said, “bring your bathing suit if you want to take a dip in the pool.” It was cold, rainy and just plain raw outside. Really?

I asked “who wants to go for a swim?” Only one person, my colleague Greg Barringer, said sure. This was on Friday. I tested the water on Saturday and thought, “Oh, It’s mighty cold. But something tells me I have to do it…. But not just yet. Maybe it will warm up Sunday.”

While it wasn’t raining Sunday, it still was pretty cold outside. At our lunch break I said to Greg, “are you really game?” “Sure, let’s do it.” His strategy was, we don’t test the water first, we just dive in. I agreed. We counted together and you see what happened.

We were in complete sync on the count and on the dive, almost as if we had rehearsed it. I didn’t stay under water for the full length of the pool, the way I normally would have as I was so shocked at the frigid temperature. It certainly got me expressive on impact – what a switch from how I stood at the edge holding my body in a contracted fashion anticipating the cold. Once submerged, I was wide-awake, completely open and invigorated – re-energized and focused for the rest of the day.

Ironically this dip took place while we were learning tools to better manage stress so we can be more vital. There is a fine line between stress and vitality. Stress results as a real or perceived threat. Yet if we are to grow we need to be uncomfortable. What is the fine line between feeling vital – full of life – and stressed or stretched beyond this alive feeling? This requires a dynamic dance or recalibration, sometimes moment-to-moment.

This was a physical exercise but has so many analogies for leadership and running a business. Some insights and observations:

• How often do we not go for something for fear of how we might be harmed, exposed or not get the results we want? Once I interviewed for a job and my potential manager said, “we only take on projects where we know we will be successful.” He was leading a change agent function. I asked, “What is the balance point of ensuring success and truly shaking the status quo in the name of necessary, hard change?”
• Being at your edge makes you feel more alive – and live more vitally.
• It’s helpful to go for something and really extend yourself when you have a partner risking and doing it with you.
• Sometimes just taking some kind of action and going for it all out is what we need to do to re-orient, re-energize ourselves.
• Being in sync requires a full out commitment and focus in the moment.
• Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today.
• Get the benefits as soon as you can.
• Getting out and doing something versus thinking about it moves you to a different place – and then you can readjust how you need to once you are in the experience of it. Sometimes good enough, is good enough, especially in entrepreneurial environments.

What are you some of your insights?
Where are you holding back?
What supports do you need to really be at your edge of growth or performance?
© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.

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Susan is an executive coach and leadership & organization effectiveness consultant. She also teaches yoga and meditation – tools to keep one sane in insane times. She helps professionals step up to their fullest leadership and growth potential. At times this means overcoming their greatest fears or trauma and getting out of their own way to get important stuff accomplished. Please contact her for a complimentary strategy session. www.sagelead.com.

Know When You Need To Just "Stop It!"

This is a classic scene with Bob Newhart. I love his humor that cajoles us to look at absurd near truths in our lives.

In my executive coaching practice my job is to help leaders both leverage their strengths and change what isn’t working for them. This change may mean to stop thinking or behaving in a way that is not helpful for them or their constituents. While coaching is definitely not therapy, there certainly are times when everyone needs to tell themselves, or have someone tell them, to just stop it! We all have our “craziness” – thoughts or behaviors that we know are not helpful yet we persist with them anyway, largely out of ingrained habit.

Sometimes examining these, and working with them, can enable a mindset shift. And sometimes we need to not take ourselves so seriously and just knock some sense into ourselves. Keeping perspective and self management can be key.

The first time I saw this clip I laughed at how ridiculous this scene is – and yet it hints at a truth. We all have stuff that we carry around unnecessarily.

My invitation today is to take inventory of your unique craziness. Where can you just say to yourself, just stop it – Let it go and move on to something else?

© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.

What Are The Critical Questions You Ask Yourself In Chaotic, Uncertain Times?

If you are wired like most humans, when confronted with uncertainty, your questions would be oriented from your limbic brain – how to create stability, security and safety for yourself. Your questions would be oriented more toward the short-term – solving your immediate problem versus satisfying a longer-term vision of where you really want to be.

The reason for this is most people’s tolerance for uncertainty and chaos, over long periods of time, is low – their trauma or stress reactions get activated: fight, flight or freeze. Reactions often create more problems. Responses, on the other hand, can set us up in a more generative, proactive space that factors in longer-term considerations.

The question of how to navigate chaos and uncertainty surfaced for me many times this week as I navigated client meetings, coaching sessions and fielded a number of calls and inquiries from my clients and network.

Historically much of my executive coaching work has been in the context of an organization’s development efforts but I had a number of people come to me this week asking if I would coach them privately. In some cases they are still with their organization but getting, what I call restructure fatigue – a new job, different team, different responsibilities every year or less. In other cases, they have been let go, with stellar performance and outplacement, but the company has changed directions and their position was eliminated.

Here is the common denominator:
They all said in the last decade their job or company has changed significantly every 18-24 months. This required that they change what they are doing, who they are doing it for, or they leave the company because of job elimination, the company goes out of business or is acquired.

One of my clients summed it up well: “The old rules don’t apply. It used to be I pleased my boss and I got promoted. Now I don’t know if I’ll have a job, even if I give him what he asked for. It used to be I was promoted every two years. Now I am kicked out every two years.”

You’d have to be living under a rock to not experience the chaotic, disruptive, uncertain nature of the world, business and the workplace today. Change is constant.

No new news here.

What is new and critical – is that people are starting to ACCEPT that this IS the new norm. So they are no longer looking to the environment to calm down so they can get back to operating in ways that are comfortable. They are no longer expecting that a job or a company will provide them security. INSTEAD, they are asking themselves deeper and more significant questions about ways to stabilize themselves and navigate the terrain with greater clarity, ease and confidence.

Some examples:

• What now must I do?
• Who am I really and how can I navigate my way through this?
• How do I balance my own integrity with what I am being asked to do?
• How do I help my people feel better, even though we agree the situation sucks, about what I am asking them to do?
• Where do I find clarity, confidence and stability when it doesn’t exist around me?
• How do I find my true north and find a larger meaning in the day-to-day?
• How can I continually develop options/contingency plans for myself?
• How do I continue to grow my skills and develop despite what jobs come and go?
• How is my work helping me be more of the person I want and am meant to be?
• How do I stay present to what is right in front me when I am feeling so much pressure and there is so much unclear about the road ahead?
• How do I stay in the place of being creative when I want to be more comfortable?

All of the above questions get at one fundamental one: how do you keep yourself focused on the bigger picture, present and stable despite what is happening around you?

The world does not need any more information. People are in overload and overwhelm. What it needs are more present, embodied leaders who are in the moment with their constituents and the situations they find themselves collectively in. These leaders intuitively decide what their next best move is based upon who they are and what they do know, not the information they don’t have.

To paraphrase multiple conversations I’ve had with clients this week, it goes like this:

“I could go get another job. This is bigger than that. I’m having a personal crisis. This is giving me the opportunity to fundamentally think differently about myself and my relationship to my work and my career.”

In light of the above, here are some questions to consider:

• Regardless of what changes happen around you, what is the capability and value you bring to your work and your constituents?
• How can you best serve?
• What is your vision for creating a better world, workplace or more meaningful work for yourself?
• In order to live your vision, who do you need to be?
• What does this vision require you to do differently?
• In service of this vision, what kind of conversations do you allow or not to go on in your own head?
• In service of this vision, what kind of conversations do you allow/foster to take place at home, in the meeting room, in the board room?

What are the questions you ask yourself to get you the clarity, integrity and stability you need to stay steady in chaotic, uncertain times?

© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.

Are you an ambitious leader who is at a crossroads – with your team, career, or work/life equation?

I work with smart, successful, capable people, who make big decisions everyday. Sometimes it can be challenging to hold your own stuff when you are in the thick of it.

My clients come to me as an objective third party who can hold the space for them, in a safe and neutral way, while they think through where they are, where they want to go, and how they will proceed going forward. Often times this process leads them to a different understanding of who they are as a person or as a leader. My job is to listen deeply, hold up the mirror, and ask provocative questions that both support and challenge them.

Here are examples of situations my clients find themselves in:

• They were recently promoted or started a new job and are looking for ways to manage and lead in different ways so they can have a bigger impact.

• They are challenged with influencing their constituents in more significant ways.

• They are doing well – getting all the external accolades – but something doesn’t feel right internally – they want something more or different from their work or their work/life equation.

In all cases they want something different from themselves or the situations they find themselves in. In some cases, the need emerges from stuff going on within them. In other cases, something external happens that is asking different things of them.

If this sounds like you, please contact me at info@sagelead.com for a complimentary strategy session to see what your next best move could be and if I might be a resource for you to leverage.

© Copyright 2016 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC. All rights Reserved.