276: How Rituals Build Capacity in Leadership and Life

Dear Friends

In this Tim Ferriss interview about his new book – The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness – Harvard professor Arthur Brooks offers unexpected advice: “Stop looking for your significance at the macro level, start looking at the micro level.”

We’re told we need vision, purpose, and grand direction to build meaningful lives. And we do. But what’s tragically forgotten is that micro-level action can be equally transformative. Consistent intentional day-to-day action in our realm of influence shapes what becomes possible to dream. Through action, we shape purpose. 

This matters even more now, when the world’s chaos makes macro-level change feel impossible. Change your world. Change the world.

Strategy
Rituals have been a part of human life for time immemorial. So, although Marilyn Zakhour and Constance Noonan Hadley entitled their article, The Surprising Power of Team Rituals, there is no surprise – rituals emerged as a way of creating community and making sense of the world. Just because the technology is ancient doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hold power.

Yet, in many organisations, the idea is rejected or not paid attention to – there is too much to get done to spend time on rituals that don’t deliver on the task at hand.  It is a mistake; short-term efficiency eroding long-term effectiveness. 

Zakhour and Hadley’s research shows that teams with high levels of rituals had happier and more committed employees:

• + 23% higher commitment to team purpose
• + 20% stronger psychological safety
• + 28% greater interpersonal knowledge
• + 22% higher job satisfaction

Intentional, consistent actions and activities that are imbued with meaning (i.e. rituals) make for a happier workplace.

Centuries of experience, and Zakhour and Hadley’s research with 929 people from 60 countries, show us that intention unlocks impact.

If ritual feels too esoteric, here are a few examples from my coaching practice.

Make a habit of surfacing difficulties. In your weekly team meetings, ask, “What is frustrating or currently difficult?” Note: the ‘what’ is important; it assumes that there must be something. The binary ‘is there’ assumes that there may be nothing, making it slightly harder to say there is indeed a problem.

If you’re the most powerful person in the room, take care to be explicit and concrete about the difficulties you’re facing. It makes it safer for the others to risk.

Take note if someone never hits impediments. Have a private chat with them. Either they’re not tackling ambitious enough projects and so are never encountering challenge, they’re coasting, or they’re embarrassed about not seeming competent, they don’t feel safe. The private chat will help reset the expectation.

Do this ritual to:

• Make it safe to identify potential risks.
• Increase the velocity on friction-busting.

Put yourself in your employees’ and customers’ shoes.

The more powerful we become, the more reality becomes distant, all around us, often invisible to us, people make effort to make our lives easier. As they do so, our lives do indeed become easier, and we lose sight of how tough it might be to get something done in our business. Spending regular days being a customer or doing customer-facing jobs is a powerful way to see whether corporate cholesterol is killing your business.

Not all rituals require action; some of the most powerful are about stopping.

I’ve seen this with client after client – when they create meeting-free, interruption-free chunks of time for themselves and their teams, creativity goes up, innovation increases, intractable problems become solvable, more possibilities appear because the space to think is there.

Not all rituals need incense. Intention and consistency are magic enough. 

What are some of your favourites?

Self
Our world is overwhelming. Yet some solutions are simple.

Sleep quality relates not only to how long and deep you sleep, but to how consistent your sleep cycle is. Recent research shows irregular sleep patterns negatively impact hormones, metabolism, cardiovascular function, immune system, appetite and mood.

The remedy is straightforward: ritual.

Set an alarm an hour before your chosen bedtime. Ban devices from that point. Use the time to prepare for sleep—read, be still, let the day settle.

Wake at the same time daily. Get 20-30 minutes of sunlight within the first hour, at roughly the same time each morning.

Two simple actions, repeated regularly. It may seem trite, but I have seen effective sleep habits supercharge leadership effectiveness. Micro action builds capacity for macro transformation.

Remember, sleep deprivation is regarded as torture for very sound reasons. Don’t do it to yourself.

[Read more here: One Sleep Habit Experts Wish You Would Adopt].

Soul
Last year, I introduced you to Jad Abumrad’s podcast series – Fela Kuti: Fear No Man.

In episode 8, Abumrad introduces us to Fela’s song Zombie. Released in 1976, Fela wrote and performed it in response to the brutality of Nigeria’s military and police in service of the then dictator, Olusegun Obasanjo.

Fela’s lyrics indict them as zombies following orders without thought.

After Fela sang each charge, his backing singers flood the track declaring ‘Zombie!’
Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go (Zombie)
Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop (Zombie)
Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn (Zombie)
Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie)

Our world increasingly wants, demands and indeed forces uncritical compliance. It demands we be zombies. Follow orders. March in step. Do as we declare.

Fela paid for Zombie. Shortly after its release, soldiers attacked his compound, threw his elderly mother from a window, beat him, and burned his home. He kept playing.

We tell ourselves our compliance is different—strategic, necessary. We’re not soldiers. The orders we follow feel different—pragmatic, professional. We’re being realistic about organizational politics.

But ask yourself: when did you last pause before repeating something you didn’t believe? When did you last speak a hard truth that your organisation didn’t want to hear? When last did you challenge a practice you knew wasn’t compassionate?

Compliance is the default; consciousness requires rituals of awareness.

Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

Choosing requires practice. Consciousness requires practice. The world needs us awake. Do one thing this week that disrupts your patterns. And then activate one of the most powerful rituals of all – reflect, learn, adapt and integrate.

Karl

PS: You can learn about my executive coaching practice [here] and find me on LinkedIn. If you’re interested in embedding learning that compounds into your company culture, I create and facilitate curated leadership learning communities and experiences. The details are [here].