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Huddle Up — Are You Ready for A New Normal?
Call me cynical, but I am a bit weary of hearing from the two extremes of doom-and-gloom realists and unrealistic “salesy” optimists. I am ready for a “new normal” that I can deal with, so my entrepreneurial brain can once again break out of the norm and soar to new heights. How about you?
I realize that redefining “normal” is painful. Believe me, I know. I’ve been thinking how I experienced the process in a very vivid and intense way when I went to New York City to help in the relief effort one month after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The city was still in shock, consumed in grief, unbelief and sadness. Everyone knew they needed to start moving on, but move on to what? What was the new normal? The best work I did during the two weeks I was there was simply to wander the streets with the intention of hearing people’s stories and letting them vocalize that life would never be the same. I kept an amazing 14-page journal if you ever want to read it, but suffice it to say they had to define a new normal pretty quickly – as did the rest of the world.
These days, I’m hearing and experiencing similar emotions as I coach clients during this time of – for some – financial tragedy. In the spirit of growth and vitality, I want to see people work through the sadness of mourning what was their old reality to accepting what is their new reality. So, although words like stability, assurance, and discipline rarely leave my lips (nor does the word SAD, which is the acronym of that trio of words), I think we leaders need to consider the wisdom they can provide.
I believe that as entrepreneurs and organizational leaders implement the SAD formula, it would grant great freedom, confidence and energy to lead well into the next phase of establishing the new “norm.” It would help us begin to build again, driving happiness and joy back into our people economy.
WHAT IF STABILITY IS A CHOICE?
Stability is an “iffy” word right now. Stress for leaders comes from the high need for control which has been stripped away by world events. We have all been out of control for so long, there has been little stability for us to offer to our team. With no stability, there is no rest, no renewal.
My realist side says we are not out of the woods yet with this recession drama. However, my optimism in the human spirit says that we have a chance at a new worldview and can adjust to the new reality of what is. Therefore we have the opportunity to create stability. What if stability is a choice? What if you can choose to offer stability to your family, your team, even yourself, in areas you do control? Just for a little heads-up around steadiness and stability, consider this: 45 percent of the population resists change for change’s sake, and after that nobody really likes change unless they are in charge of it or have a big say in it.
As a leader, I am considering how I can create a stable environment and let people around me regain their balance, renew their energy, and reignite their passion. This does not happen without intention. People need your confidence and assurance as their leader. Together let’s find ways to provide stability so that we can grow.
HONEST ASSURANCE, NOT THE RAH-RAH KIND
The second part of the cure for living in a SAD, depressed environment is for the leader to provide assurance. Again, not a bunch of positive-thinking non-factual rah-rah, but honest, kind assurance that you will do the right thing as their leader with whatever means you have within your control.
I find my clients are often thinking this and working themselves sick to make sure their people are taken care of. Yet they rarely take the time to articulate it to the very people they are caring for with the assurance they are with them and for them. Instead, driven leaders in a stressed-out, burned-out, exhausted state keep pushing their people at a very unsustainable rate. I am very worried for that leader’s future.
People may follow you for a while in a fear-based dictator state. But the first chance they get to go with a leader who truly cares for their well being and offers them stability and assurance, they will silently leave you and you won’t know what happened.
I have coached many leaders who had to face the fact that their intention to care was totally eclipsed by their dominant, driven behavior. Remember people do not read your motives they read your actions. Offer assurance and get people back onboard.
DISCIPLINE TO SHAKE OFF THE RUBBLE AND REBUILD
The final step is discipline. It is time for new disciplines to be implemented and followed through. This time in history has granted us great insight into where we have been slacking or wasteful. It is now time to shake the rubble off and get to rebuilding the future you desire and that is truly purposeful.
Many of us have learned we don’t need to work so hard to accomplish more. Others have seen how truly unmotivated they are without routines, systems, and procedures. Great! You now know something very valuable about yourself. It is time to get up and get into this new game we are playing.
The message isn’t a SAD one, after all. Ban the doom-and-gloom realists and unrealistic “salesy” optimists. Life is an adventure, and right now is the time to accept the “new normal” and then to figure out how to blow past it and be exceptional!
Your Coach,
Shandel
If you need help with creating your new normal, renew culture or reinvigorate your team – call me. I love that stuff!
MVP Award — Successful People Living with Intention: Roger Ferdinand
This month’s MVP is Roger Ferdinand, and what a great story Roger has to share. My joy has come from watching Roger give himself freedom to be more of who he is, to make courageous decisions to break out of his own limiting beliefs and experience the moment of what my friend April coined, “A sudden clarity of where I’ve always belonged.” His promotion, his renewed purpose, and his vision for his team are only a taste of all that is awaiting him as he continues bravely in his process. I am so proud of you, Roger, and I know your Life 301 group is grinning too.
Here’s Roger…
Change is hard. Change is scary. I think that’s as apt a description as any of my journey over the past year.
The journey really started in 2002 when the small software company where I had worked for seven years was purchased by a much larger corporation. Our new parent corp. had a product that was a direct competitor of our product, albeit primarily in Europe where we had a limited presence. We soon learned that our product was going to take a backseat, and that the focus would be on our new parent’s product with the goal of introducing it into the North and South American markets where our original company had good market share and a good reputation.
Fast forward three years and the situation had reversed. We received tacit permission to take our original product, which ran in a proprietary operating system on proprietary hardware, and make it run on PCs in the Windows operating system. No mean feat considering that many companies have attempted projects like this and have failed. Miserably. For reasons that eluded me, I was named as Project Lead with a team of three other developers. The real journey had begun.
As I said, change is hard. Change is scary. I was thrust into a position of responsibility that was far above what I had held previously. I honestly felt like the future of our operation was on my shoulders. I had just come off a project where I filled more of a lieutenant role. That project had been canceled unceremoniously with no truly working software to show for it. I wasn’t going to let that happen to this project.
In general, I tend to set high standards for myself and measure my performance and the performance of others against those standards. Fortunately, for the first nine months my team was composed of high-performing, like-minded individuals, and it was easy to make tough decisions. Then, in early 2006, we began to integrate developers from the “old code” – “newbies” even though many of them had been with the company for nearly as long as I had. That’s the real challenges started.
The challenges centered, primarily, on getting the newbies to think in new ways. Consider the results if you were tasked with designing and building a 2009 Prius, and you used only the knowledge and tools that were available in 1968. It might look, superficially, like a 2009 Prius, but it certainly won’t match the performance and quality of one built by the guys from Toyota. Performance and contributions of the newbies often didn’t rise to my standards. Conflict ensued. By 2007 my role had unofficially morphed from Project Lead to Product Manager with responsibility for the life and success of the product squarely on my shoulders and most decisions running through me. The buck stopped here. I was “of management” but not “in management” with a lot of responsibility (actual and assumed) but little authority. A difficult position for anyone.
Fast forward another two years to early 2008. The product had successfully migrated to Windows and was installed and running at nearly 50 percent of our customers’ locations. By this time I’m completely burned out from working 60-70 hour weeks since early 2003 and ready to quit. Conflict and stress were constants in my work life and had overflowed into my family life (which I had stupidly sacrificed for 5-plus years). The problem is I don’t like to quit. However, I was at a point where the things I was doing weren’t working — for me or for the team.
It was at that time that I was offered the opportunity to work with an executive coach, and after some soul-searching, I decided to give it a try. I joked that my manager and HR director were orchestrating an “intervention” for me. If so, I’m glad they did.
Yes, change is hard. Change is scary. To my detriment, I will admit, I tend to try to work things out on my own. Committing to working with someone who would “tell me what to do” didn’t fit with that mode, but I was ready to try because I could at least recognize that 1) where I was wasn’t where I wanted to be, and 2) I knew I could get back to being the kind of person I wanted to be; the kind of person I would want to work for.
I interviewed several coaches to best determine who I felt I could work with. I definitely did not want someone who was going to tell me “do this, that, and the other, and you’ll be a good executive.” What I heard in each interview was how great they were and what they’d do for me. At the end of the interviews I knew more about them than they did about me. I felt commoditized.
Enter Shandel. I could immediately tell that her focus was on me and not on herself. I learned all the right things about her, and she got to know me. I felt that we could work together with the right mix of “touchy-feely” (hey, we all need some) and stern “coaching” without tending too far in either direction.
The first thing we did was to try to get to the core of “who I am,” “what drives me,” “what do I believe in,” “what’s important to me.” I learned and re-learned things about myself that I had been suppressing in order to be the “hero” and make my project a success. I’d like to say that I had an epiphany-like moment and all was well. Gee, that would’ve been nice. No, there have been ups and downs. The downs have sometimes been so depressing that I questioned the whole process. The ups have more than balanced the downs. I joined Shandel’s Life 301 class in September 2008 and consider myself lucky to have been able to share 12 weeks with some wonderful people who were working through some of the same issues as me. I felt joy in their successes and knew that mine had to be just around the corner.
In late March of this year I was asked to assume a real management position in the company. It’s not something I was seeking, but looking back on the past year I can see that it is a natural result of many of the processes I’ve put in place and the energy I’ve put into our product and our development staff. Shandel had once told me that I needed to define my “brand.” I had no idea what she meant, and it sounded like something overachievers do. That didn’t sound like me. What she really meant was “think about and write down what you believe in, what’s important to you, what you stand for.” You don’t have to publish it or rent a billboard. You just have to get it down on paper and be clear and honest with yourself. When I was offered the management role, I decided it was time to do just that. It was a liberating experience, and I was able to share it with my team in our first meeting. Their response was surprising. They were excited! I shared it with one of the other managers, and his response was “I want to work for you.” Wow. No one had said anything like that to me for many years.
Is everything perfect now? Of course not. I do think I’ve come a long way toward (or is it backward?) returning to the kind of person I used to be, the kind of person I want to be. I still have a long way to go (those high standards I set for myself), and I know that I ‘m still a long way from being the husband, father, manager, friend that I want to be. The difference today is that I have some experience and better insight into myself to draw on. Change is still hard. It’s just a little less scary now.
Roger Ferdinand
