Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

stress

Maybe You’re An Anxious Striver

By Leave a Comment

 

 

Years ago I learned something from my friend Jen Louden. It’s her idea of “Conditions of Enoughness”. Basically, it’s deciding before you set out to do anything what “enough” will feel like, so you know when you’re done.

I thought of this brilliant concept recently when hearing people talk about their drive for constant improvement. It occurred to me that constant improvement could actually be a bad thing.

Like, how you remove minute parts of a knife everytime you sharpen it. And, if you persist in sharpening the edge, at some point the knife loses its structural integrity and becomes a wisp of a thing rather than the sharp thing it once was.

I was reflecting on people who are what I call “anxious strivers”. The kinds of folks who are driven to go-go-go and do-do-do. Who only eat foods which have a point – their diet exists merely to provide protein, minerals, and “good fats”. They only read books which will improve their lives. Every spare minute is devoted to Doing Something In Service To Something Else.

Joy has very little role in their lives.

I have to ask, though: When you live in pursuit of constant improvement, when do you know how to stop? When do you know what enough is like? Because of the relentless “constant” in “constant improvement”, are you putting yourself on a hamster wheel that never stops and calling it exemplary performance?

Perhaps then, rather than constant improvement, we need to think about simply having clear goals and working to meet them. In that context, the questions become more like: How did I do yesterday? Do I need to do something differently than yesterday to reach my goal? Is it enough to keep doing what I’m doing and stay on this path I’ve set? Does this feel like enough yet?

That’s not to say stop learning. To stop incorporating your learning into your actions. I would never say that, because I’m a learner through and through.

I am suggesting that anxious striving, never knowing what enoughness looks like, never doing something just for the fun of it, sharpening your edge until you have nothing left… this is the recipe for burnout and unhappiness and, oddly enough, ultimately leads to a lack of real, meaningful progress.

Prepared? Or Just Reacting?

By Leave a Comment

There are a lot of choices you make in the course of your day.

Paper or plastic.

Doughnuts or vegetables.

Car or bus.

Honesty or fudging.

Tweeting or keeping your thoughts to yourself.

So many choices.

There’s one big, unspoken choice many of us feel like we have no choice about at all: whether to be prepared or to simply react.

When I’m called into an underfunctioning organization with underfunctioning leaders, know what I see most often? Folks in back-to-back meetings from 8:15am until 6:30pm (or later), every single day with no time to prepare for any of these meetings let alone prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. They just sit in their chair at the table in the conference room and do their best to wing it based on what they know in the moment.

What’s the problem with that, you ask? Doesn’t that just mean that the work they’re doing is critically important? That they are a fast-paced, high-stakes, high-pressure, cool kids sort of organization?

Let me get back to that and tell you a story first.

I was an advanceman at the White House, and in a bunch of campaigns. The job of the advanceman is to go ahead of the principal and set everything up in advance (get it?) so the events flow easily and go off without a hitch.

For multi-day meetings with other foreign leaders, we might have five to six weeks of preparation and would get our schedule down to a minute-by-minute timeline.

This was all about being prepared.

Which really paid off when the event was underway and something unexpected happened. Like, meetings ran too long. Or news broke elsewhere. Or the button popped off the President’s suit coat (really happened. It was sewn back on by the traveling nurse with suture since no one had a sewing kit).

Through all my years of this kind of work, I discovered that the more prepared I was, the better I was able to react. Preparation had given me a container to work within, and even if something happened I hadn’t planned for I was able to get back on track quickly – because I was prepared to execute successfully.

Today’s workplace has lost the ability to prepare, it seems to me. We’re all about reacting.

And there is a certain adrenaline rush to being fully in reactive mode. It’s like being on the back of a bucking bronco, holding on for dear life. That frisson of energy: Can I pull it off?

Plus, there’s a lot of drama involved with living in a reactive mode which is entirely intoxicating to many, many people in the average office.

Finally, when you’re simply reacting with no preparation, it’s super easy to say, “Well, that went badly. Too bad we didn’t have time to think it through! We’ll get ’em next time!” and folks escape all responsibility for a less than ideal outcome.

Some folks like this. A lot.

So they spend more than 95% of their time reacting and, if they’re lucky, less than 5% prepping.

I’d like to propose a new approach to our days. What do you think would be different in your life if you spent 60% of your time preparing and 40% reacting? What could you achieve?

What if, rather than back-to-back meetings, you had back-to-back planning time?

What if every meeting you did attend was focused on preparation? What if every meeting drove toward decision-making, backed up by prep done in advance of the meeting?

What could you accomplish if you actually had time to think during the day?

The current paradigm of “You know you’re important if you have no time to actually get anything done” has got to go. People who are too busy to perform – don’t answer email, can’t take phone calls, winging meetings, on the road and unavailable all the time – are not cool.

They’re actually holding everyone else back.

I challenge you – especially if you lead a group of people and are intent upon reaching certain goals and even if you’re a full-time parent or retiree – to flip your paradigm away from willy-nilly reaction to purposeful preparation.

The promise is that you’ll get what you want more quickly, easier, with a greater ability to flow with anything unexpected which might come your way.

And that is how the real cool kids roll.

 

Talking About The Elephant In The Room

By 2 Comments

Missed me the last couple of weeks? Yeah, it’s been frustrating for me, too. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to write anything I felt good about.

And that’s because there’s a very large, very gray, very wrinkly elephant in the room. Standing right there between us.

See, it’s like there are competing voices in my head. One says “write things people who might hire you will like because you are a business person, after all.” And another voice says, “Wow, writing like that feels contrived and inauthentic. Don’t do that.”

After some reflection and journaling and a few macaroons (the kind dipped in dark chocolate, if you’re interested), I’ve realized that when I merely show up and show myself, things tend to work out just fine.So that’s my intention with this space.

It’s a crazy world out there and – elephant alert – I want to write about how to cope and how to manage dealing with it all.

Here’s this week’s critical topic: How can you express yourself – how can you show up and be seen – in times like these?

Times where partisanship is applauded more than cooperation.

Times when trolls with screen courage unleash blistering vitriol at the slightest provocation.

Times when you’re not sure if you can take one more news report, one more headline.

But I’m here to tell you that if you swallow your voice, if you make yourself mouse-like, if you keep your head down and mind your own business, you will feel increasingly more awful than you feel now.

You will begin to feel as though you’re vanishing.

I work with clients who are Democrats, and clients who are Republicans, and clients who are independents. And some who live in Europe, Latin American or Asia. All of them – each and every one – are stressed by the tenor and tone of even chatting with people we’ve always thought of as friends these days.

Want to know how I try to navigate?

First, I never assume that anyone believes what I believe or interprets situations exactly how I do. As Stephen Covey suggests in his classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I seek to understand and then to be understood.

This means that sometimes I get to say, “I get what you’re saying. I don’t happen to agree – can I tell you why?”

The best case scenario is when they say, “Yes, I’d love to hear your perspective.” And if they say, no, they’re not at all interested in what I have to say…I move along.

Second, I remind myself all the time that I am a learner. Curiosity is my hallmark and my day is not quite complete if I haven’t satisfied that particular interest. With that framework, I can hear your perspective with and open heart and mind…

Unless, third, you are voicing hateful, exclusionary, racist beliefs. If that happens, I will tell you directly that you are wrong and I will not stand for slurs, epithets or threats. And then I get myself out of your presence.

Because what we need in our world today is far less hate and far more cooperation.

We need people to show up and show themselves – the best parts of themselves – as we find solutions to all the problems we face.

I’m going to do my part in my own little patch. Join me by doing what you can in your own patch. And, patch by patch, we’ll become the change we seek.

Do You Think Like An Hourly Employee?

By Leave a Comment

City commuters. Abstract blurred image of a city street scene.

 

It takes a lot to blow my mind. Really, a lot.

And recently I have, indeed, had my mind blown.

So let me tell you about it.

First, this thing kept coming up over and over again in my one-on-one coaching sessions. At first, just one person said it, then another, then three more and then – obviously, I’m lightning quick on the uptake – the shape of the thing became clear.

And I leaned back in my chair and said, “Wow.”

The realization is that some of us, even if we have a capital C in our title – CEO, COO, CFO – still see ourselves as hourly employees.

Especially if our parents were hourly employees. If our grandparents were hourly employees? Well, in that case, the mindset is often completely baked in.

So what, you ask? What’s wrong with hourly employment?

Nothing – I’ve had plenty of jobs that paid by the hour (Would You Like Fries With That?). There’s dignity, importance and purpose in working this way.

Though, sometimes, the clues we get working in hourly jobs are these:

  • The boss is the boss and I do what the boss tells me to do
  • I do my shift and that’s all I owe them
  • Work is drudgery and it’s impossible to get ahead
  • My schedule is not my own
  • I could be fired at any time for any reason so I better sit down, shut up and look busy

These clues add up to an attitude we take with us when we move into a salaried role. I’ve seen it so many times, manifested as:

  • Being fearful of (and overly deferential to) leadership
  • Not taking a stand or having an opinion
  • Working to the clock
  • Anxiety, depression and uncertainty

Other folks take it in a whole other direction. They make it:

  • “I’m being paid so much money – I have to give this job everything I’ve got!”
  • Fearful of losing the job they never believed they could have
  • Working with no boundaries
  • Anxious about having sole responsibility for decision-making
  • Impossible to have difficult conversations with subordinates
  • No or limited interests outside of work

Now, of course, this doesn’t affect every hourly employee who’s ever moved into a salary role and not everyone responds the same way.

But enough do that it warrants a little exploration, if you ask me.

Because I have seen people sabotage their careers because they haven’t been able to make the mental jump from “someone who does what other people tell them to do” to “I tell people what to do.”

They can’t seem to figure out how to move from “I am on a tightrope over a chasm of failure” to “Mistakes happen and my role makes it possible for me to learn and lead regardless.”

It’s a big leap from “I’m a cog in the machine” to “I run the machine.”

Most of us will work for years and years. My Social Security summary shows that I paid my first FICA tax in 1977 (from an hourly wage job!). Assuming that I continue working until I’m 70, that’s a work life spanning 53 years. Fifty-three years, darlings.

That is a long time to simply survive.

It’s enough time to realize that each of us what we learned in the past may have suited us in the past, but today is today. And it’s completely fair to consider: What works for me today?

Could it be appreciating an hourly past but living right now, in these circumstances?

Maybe it’s creating a life and a career that works not only for you but for the people you’re connected with – family, friends, colleagues and superiors alike.

I believe it’s also the satisfaction that comes from knowing, regardless of all the obstacles, that you’ve persevered and made a difference.

All of us owe it to ourselves to know where our feeling of limitation and anxiety is rooted and then pull up the roots and take a hard look.

If your ancient, inherited attitudes toward work are holding you back from being fulfilled and happy (which you can be even with work that’s challenging) then perhaps it’s time to toss those old roots onto the compost pile and start planting new seeds. And my hope is that they flower as a new way of being – and success – in your own +50 year work life.

 

 

 

The Fierce Velocity of Living

By Leave a Comment

 

Dust on the notesLife comes at us with a certain fierce velocity these days.

Due dates, deadlines, status updates, pressure – the pace is frenetic and the intensity is off the charts.

And that’s for parents of pre-schoolers.

Your life is pretty daggone intense and fast, too.

Even your favorite executive coach feels the pressures of workload, but fortunately I have plenty of tactics and skills to bring to bear when the speed gets to be a little too…overwhelming.

First thing I do?

Take a break.

I know, I know – “bear down, get through it, push, shoulder to the wheel” – but, really, no. Taking a small stop when things are hectic is a sure way to prevent errors.

Like, let’s say you’re using a crane to lift a piano out of a third floor apartment, so you pause right at the window to make sure you’re at the precisely correct angle. Just a pause before you go forward. Before you scrape the entire left side or, heaven forbid, totally shatter the instrument.

You take a minute and you check.

So that’s why I haven’t written in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been taking a wee pause to make sure:

– I want to keep writing

– I know what it is I want to say

– I understand how it is I want to write

And, it occurs to me that I could use your perspective.

You see, since 2005, when I started a monthly newsletter (and a special shout out to the 52 of you who read that first issue – I have a list, I know who you are, and I really appreciate your continued steadfastness), I have written with an eye toward what you, the reader, would like to hear. To find a topic, I’ve often thought, “Two of my readers are having coffee today… What are they talking about?”

I think of you.

What you need, and what you want, matters to me. So I’d appreciate it if you would take 90 seconds to answer five simple questions for me: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z6M7PKH

That way, I can put your feedback into the mix of what I’ve been thinking and come out with even more clarity around what I do.

And it will make our time together than much more rewarding, and fun.

Thank you.

Time To Play Hooky

By Leave a Comment

 

 

relax footI know how stressed you are. I really do.

I know how completely you throw yourself into everything you do and how chaotic things can get.

Let’s face it, friend. You’re exhausted.

Putting one heavy foot in front of the other,  day after frazzled day in a frenzied, numbing march toward something you’re not even sure about any more – that’s you.

So. There’s really only one thing I can recommend.

It’s a little thing and, at the same time, it’s a really big thing.

Take a day off.

Really.

One day off. You don’t do it enough, do you?

(Do you do it ever?)

Yes, what I’m talking about is playing hooky.

As odd as it may seem to all of us Type-A, hard chargers, when you play hooky, you don’t do any work.

Don’t do laundry.

Don’t shop for groceries.

Don’t drive anyone anywhere.

Don’t do anything that needs to be done.

Instead, you take a whole day. Off.

(The very idea of it feels so free and “can I really get away it it?”-ish, doesn’t it?)

OK, maybe it’s been so long since you’ve played hooky that you can’t remember what to do with a whole day to yourself. So let me give you some suggestions:

Turn off your phone and leave your computer un-booted.

Take a walk and don’t pay any attention to how many steps you’re getting in.

Read a book cover-to-cover.

Wade barefoot in a creek.

Hit golf balls at the driving range – not to work on your game, but just to watch the way the balls arc through the air.

Give a dog’s belly a thorough rub.

Take a nap.

Take two naps, even.

Eat a ripe peach over the sink and let the juice dribble down your chin.

Call a friend you haven’t talked with in a while and catch up.

Meander.

Loaf.

Take deep breaths.

And, really and truly relax.

I promise you that everything on your to-do list will be there tomorrow. The world won’t end if you take a day for yourself.

I’ll bet you, in fact, that you come back to your to-do list with a renewed sense of energy and purpose, simply because you’re not so flipping exhausted.

One day. Just one.

Twenty-four hours for you to do… nothing.

If that doesn’t sound like bliss, I don’t know what does.

So, what do you say? How about tomorrow?

 

 

I’m Not Buying My Kids A Single Gift This Christmas

By 4 Comments

 

Stack Of Handcrafted Gift Boxes

It’s true. I am not buying my kids anything this Christmas.

Not one sweater.

Not one electronic thingamajig.

No Word-of-the-Day 2015 calendar.

No Guinness Book of World Records.

No iTunes gift cards stocking stuffers (I mean, it’s all streaming music up in here, anyway).

No, I’m not purchasing any of those things this year.

Instead, my kids – almost 22 years old and nearly 19 years old) – and I are going to have an experience.

Or, more likely, a whole set of experiences.

Because instead of exchanging gifts, we’re going on a trip this Christmas.

To some place they’ve never been, and I’ve only visited briefly for work. A place with great history and a wonderful climate and world-class food.

A place that’s easy to get to and relatively affordable. Because we’re not Kardashians, you know.

It’s a place where we can all kick back from school, work and deadlines to just…be together.

And we’re being thoughtful about it. The plan is that each of us will plan one outing during the trip – and pick up the check – as a gift for the others.

Because when it’s all said and done, will any of us remember some electronic thingamajig or will we remember the three of us stumbling upon an amazing street corner concert and dancing like fools?

I have to tell you, for the first time in my adult life my holiday stress level is so low it’s hardly measurable.

Sure, there are some things I’ve lovingly sent to folks – a shopping process which feels very happy because it’s a delight, rather than a chore.

And, OK, you might think my family would feel short-changed because there’s very little under our Christmas tree, or that our Christmas spirit would be nil because why bother decorating if you’re not going to be home?

But quite the opposite has happened.

The house is more decorated than ever – because I’ve had the time to do it.

Christmas songs are on a continual loop on Spotify. Harmonies are happening.

The See’s candy box is in its usual place of reverence on the kitchen counter.

“Love, Actually” has been viewed.

And Christmas cards are done, stamped and sent.

(That last one right there is a Christmas miracle, I tell you. A true Christmas miracle.)

So, yeah, I’m not purchasing anything at the mall or online or from a passing peddler for my kids this year.

Instead, I’m giving them memories.

Which, if you want to know the truth, is my favorite self-gift, too.

 

 

 

The Simple Manifesto

By Leave a Comment

Red-Tailed Hawk
Let’s make this simple.

And when I say that, I don’t mean just these words you’re reading right now.

I mean, let’s make everything simple.

Let’s stop making things hard just because we have an idea that anything worthwhile has to be a challenge.

Let’s stop complicating things in some misplaced effort to justify ourselves and affirm our right to be at the table.

Let’s be done with attempting to prove something by being difficult and inscrutable.

Because it really never works. That is, if you intend to get anything done.

Sometimes people complain to me that they send email and never get any responses. When I review what they’ve written, it’s easy to see why – they’ve very formally written right around whatever they have to say. And often they fail to clearly ask  for what they want the reader to do, so they never get what they need.

That right there is the definition of “doesn’t work”.

And we want it to work, don’t we?

Here’s something to consider if you’re struggling with the idea of “simple”:

Wordy, flowery, clever does not equal smart, insightful, helpful.

Formal, complicated and incomprehensible does not help clarity, understanding and action.

1 + 1 does not need sine, cosine or tangent to solve.

When you have a choice, and you always have a choice – pick simple.

Make your presentation less about bullet points and more about a story.

Make your meeting less about catching everyone up and more about making decisions.

Make your email less about sparkling, witty repartee and more about asking directly for what you want/need.

Take one clear step forward instead of three steps to the left if you want to move ahead.

Always, always, always look for the simplest solution. You don’t need stress and friction.

Own easy.

Be easy.

And you’ll win, easy.