Life is Not a Solo Flight
Good morning friends
Can you believe that this month my coaching practice is two years old and that today is this newsletter’s 80th edition?
I have been fortunate to coach an amazing array of people – founders of businesses of all sizes, executives in large corporates, artists, photographers, filmmakers, senior academics, and independent professionals. My life has been immeasurably enriched by the experience of working with them. To my clients who are reading today, thank you!
You can click here to see what some of them have said about working with me.
Today I am sharing one of my client experiences with you, and so the letter is slightly longer than normal.
A few weeks ago, this particular client persuaded me to address a gathering of 150 of his colleagues. I initially protested that I only work one-on-one or in small groups. The story behind the story, my real worry, was that I am not the bouncy, exuberant motivational sort. I was fearful that I would bore everyone to checking-social-media-whilst-my-camera-is-off-because-no-one-will-know.
He turned my processes against me, reminding me that what a fan I am (for my clients at any rate) of small experiments that generate learning. Having successfully ninja’d me, I had to agree (clearly I had coached him well 😉).
I decided to approach it as I would approach a coaching session, quietly, with care and a desire to connect.
He was right. It was an amazing experience. One that I thoroughly enjoyed and has me contemplating doing more of them.
I left enriched by the conversation, by the energy of the people on the call, and the realization that I could indeed speak to large groups of people in a way that was valuable for them.
We started quietly. I am generally a quiet soul, and I had just exited my bout with Covid and was still struggling with its after-effects.
I was also conscious that many people had lost loved ones to the pandemic, so we started by calling to mind those who had passed on. Remembering them, and in the remembering, honoring who they had been to us.
You can do the same now. Close your eyes. Remember them. Thank them for who they were to you.
Then, I invited people on the call to share their memories with us, to allow us the opportunity to be touched by the people who had touched them.
The memories were powerful, beautiful, and they had lessons for how we live now. They allowed us to see each other in new ways. Suddenly, there was a gentleness and connection that hadn’t been present at the start of the call.
You can do the same in your context. Pause, reflect and share. If you’re not confident about doing it, ask me to assist. I’ll happily do so. It will be my gift to you and your teams.
With that foundation of connection and trust in place, this is what I said…
“Today, we are going to explore changing the world by how you lead and live.
Changing the world? That can feel overwhelming.
The Economist recently said, “By the standards of the 21st century as a whole, 2021 will almost certainly go down as a comparatively cool year. By the standards of the rest of human history, its weather looks disconcertingly like hell.”
London Business School Professor, Gary Hamel in his recent – Wall Street Journal bestselling – book Humanocracy observed that “at present, the average CEO compensation in America’s 350 largest companies is $17.2 million a year, or 278 times the pay of a typical frontline worker”. The last time there was such extreme inequality was the Roman Empire and that didn’t end well.
I don’t know about you, but I often feel overwhelmed by that world, like it’s outside of my reach.
I also know that simply isn’t true. I know that the actions I take or don’t take, have a ripple effect, and if enough other people also act, or don’t … well, then, we can change the world … or not.
So, if I can change my world, if we can change our worlds, perhaps, through what we do every day, we can change THE world.
Where do we start?
Well, you can start, like we started today.
By connecting with people.
By taking the time to show that you care about their experience.
For a moment forget about the deadlines, connect with the people.
Bill Campbell, the former CEO of Intuit, Apple board member, and coach for many years to Eric Schmidt and the Google executive team used to start every single meeting by asking what had happened in people’s lives the previous week. Not their jobs, not their workflow, their lives.
We spend the majority of our adult lives at work. How can we make it better?
We all know that the majority of the working world is not engaged at work. The ADP Research Institute tells us that only 16% of people are fully engaged at work…for the rest…well, ‘not engaged’ doesn’t sound terrible, but think about doing something that you’re not really enjoying, doing that every day, for the rest of your life, doesn’t that just suck the joy out you?
The research tells us this; the strongest determinant of happiness at work is whether you can use your strengths EVERY DAY at work.
It’s tempting to think then that the journey starts with your boss, or with HR, but actually it starts with you and you, you are unique.
If you don’t believe me, consider the experience of US engineer Gilbert Daniels. Daniels was trying to design a seat for a fighter jet. He needed an average across 10 dimensions. He figured it should be easy after all pilots were already selected on similar physical characteristics. He didn’t need them to fit exactly, he needed them to fit into the middle 30% across all ten dimensions. Across the 4,063 US Air Force pilots, he measured he found exactly none, zero, that fitted that broad average definition. That’s how unique we are.
This isn’t unique to physical characteristics. In every job role that the Gallup Organisation has studied, they see that there are core characteristics that shape success, but that each individual uses those strengths differently. There is no one route to success.
To make it clearer – The Rock, Samuel L Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Frances McDormand, Thandi Newton – are all incredibly successful actors. All wildly different. They are themselves. Elon Musk, Richard Branson…you get the point…
If you’re going to change the world you have to, you must, know yourself. You have to know your story.
And before you say that you do, do you indeed? Who have you ever told your whole story to?
When have you ever paused to tell yourself your story?
As you do this pay attention, does the story you tell yourself match who you are? What are the things that you enjoy doing most? Do you do them every day?
You might be telling yourself that you are a rebellious, rule-breaking innovator – heck, the whole world wants us to be innovative – but in truth, you are the happiest colouring inside the lines. You’re the systems person, the risk manager, the owner of governance. Be that person.
You might be telling yourself that you’re the deep specialist. Your mom was an engineer, your dad a scientist, you also need to be a deep specialist. It’s what your family does, but you love doing multiple things and finding the magic in the mix. Be that person.
It takes time. It is not as obvious as you think, but get to know yourself, be that person.
Know your strengths. Use them every day. You’ll have flow. You’ll be happier. You’ll have more energy. Energy that you can use to change your world.
Critically, once you know your strengths. Share them. Tell people about them. Ask your leader for the space to use them. If you don’t tell them, they won’t know. Tell the people you love what you’ve discovered, ask them to support you. Life is not a solo flight.
Then, help others to use their strengths.
Two more dimensions of engagement at work are:
- In my work, I am always challenged to grow.
- I know I will be recognised for excellent work.
You can only do that for others when you know what their strengths are, so take the time to listen.
And then take the time to tell them when they’ve been really effective. Be specific. Affirm exactly what they did and what impact it had.
Work-life can be overwhelming, and the processes and systems often fail to see the person. They feel impossible to change. That’s the beautiful power of bureaucracy.
Experiment a little. Try tweaking the system.
You don’t need a policy change. You need agreement from your colleagues to try something and learn from it. It could be as small as you all agree not to message each other on any platform for three hours, or just one hour. Try it, see what you learn.
Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, insists that failure is fine as long as it delivers high-value learning…of course that applies in the innovation part of the business…don’t try to get fancy in high risk, strong control parts of the business…keep it real…
Think about the world that you want to live in. Do your leadership decisions align with that? Are they decisions that you’d proudly share with your children at dinner? If they aren’t, well…
No expenditure is neutral. You can use it to transform ownership, you can use it to support exciting entrepreneurs, you can use it to entrench democracy…be conscious…and if you’re not conscious, don’t be shocked when you don’t get a world you like…And even if you don’t control corporate budgets, you control your household budget. Spread your spend, consciously support a variety of businesses. My favourite way to do this is part of our grocery spend goes to our local food club.
One of the world’s most famous song-writing duos, Elton John and Bernie Taupin came together because a record company executive handed Taupin’s business card to John, saying ‘contact this person, there might be a connection’ …this after Elton had failed to win a contract with the company…that small act of generosity changed the world of music. You can do the same. You never know what new worlds your acts could unlock.
Shortly before I did the talk, I got a call from a former colleague. She told me that her daughter was top of her matric class, and she thanked me. I was baffled, I hadn’t spoken to her in 8 years and had only ever briefly met her daughter.
She reminded me that her daughter had had learning difficulties and that whenever she needed to take her to specialists, my response was “Take the time, her future is important. We’ll work around this”. And we always did. Those small sacrifices, those moments of colleagues pulling together helped a life to change.
So, start with yourself, know your strengths, listen to others, connect, and show you care about them, as people not as roles or deliverables, as people, appreciate them and their strengths, experiment and learn, and be brave – not everything needs to be done the ‘right’ way, do what you know is truly, deeply right and you’ll change the world.”
Thank you for reading. Next week will be a little shorter. Please let me know what you thought, I’d appreciate your feedback.
Karl
PS: If this is your first time reading strategy, soul, and self you can subscribe here. I share extra snippets on my Instagram and LinkedIn profiles.
(this letter was first published on 15 August 2021)