Brian Gorman guides executives as they live into greater versions of themselves at TransformingLives.Coach.
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It’s not just about what you are doing.
It’s as much, if not more, about who you are being.
In every aspect of our lives, we have an unlimited number of ways we can show up. For most of us, most often we show up on autopilot, just as we have shown up in that place, in that relationship, in that circumstance a thousand times before. And yet in doing so, we are not bringing our best selves, we are not bringing our wisest selves, we are not bringing our fullest selves.
Relying on muscle memory and neural networks is a natural part of being human. It is what allows us to fit into the culture at work and life at home. It’s how we go through our daily, weekly, seasonal and annual routines with less effort. And it is what allows us to focus on the exceptional — whether a new opportunity, a new challenge or a new insight — when it arises. But by their very nature, relying on our neural networks and our muscle memory replaces our full presence in the moment. It prevents us from finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, of seeking better ways of being in that moment, of experimenting with showing up as a better version of ourselves. It also inhibits our ability to see better ways of doing.
Being A Manager
As a business coach, it is not unusual to encounter new managers who have come up through the ranks. They were members of teams, often doing the work of the team in collegial ways, forming friendships with team members, catching and fixing one another’s mistakes. And they attempt to manage in the same way: as a friend who fixes the mistakes of team members under them. But this approach is unlikely to lead to a successful outcome; the role of manager is fundamentally different than the role of teammate. As a manager, your role is to get work done through other people. It is to hold them accountable and to help them grow in their roles and strengthen their performance. The role of the manager includes helping team members learn how to fix their own mistakes and to make fewer and fewer of them. Being a successful manager means serving your team, not being servile to them in the name of friendship nor holding them hostage as the authoritarian “boss.”
Being A Leader
Some managers advance to leadership positions; some of those, though far from all, grow into leaders. Peter Drucker defined managers as those who make sure things are done right and leaders as those who ensure people are doing the right things. In other words, managers are focused internally: Are we delivering the products, the services, the outcomes that we have promised? Leaders are focused outward: What is it that our clients, the marketplace, the foreseeable future demand and that we are — or can be — positioned to provide?
As a leader, you need to show up, to be, in ways that are different than when you were a manager. Yes, you still need to be attuned to life inside of the organization. You also need to become much more attuned to life outside. While this calls on many of the same “doing skills” (stakeholder engagement, active listening, creative problem solving, etc.), it calls on applying these skills in new ways, and on being the bridge between the internal and the external, the organization and the world. And it calls on you to do so with a greater eye toward the future.
More Fully Being
So how does one focus more fully on being?
Much like driving down the road and hitting a pothole, unanticipated disruptions in our lives call us out of our passive auto-responses and into the present. But rather than what is often an automatic “What do I need to do?” begin with “Who do I need to be?” “Who do I need to be as a leader of an organization who is living in the uncertain future of the novel coronavirus pandemic?” “Who do I need to be as a manager whose employees are suddenly sharing their workdays with work-from-home spouses, school-from-home children and elderly family members whose caretakers are no longer available?”
When you know who you need to be, it is much easier to determine what you need to do and how you need to do it. It is also possible to address your being through intentional reflection. If those who report to you, work with you and/or supervise you were asked which elements of your being serve both the organization and you well and which ones don’t, what would they answer? How would you answer that question for yourself?
Identify and prioritize those ways of being that you want to change. Work on them one at a time; the best approach, as I’ve written about previously, is to focus not on breaking the old way of being, but rather on building the new. Begin by identifying the triggers that activate the way of being you want to change; you may find it helpful to identify a few times a day when you will sit quietly, reflect on when that way of being was activated and log the trigger(s) that set it off. Start to pay attention to those triggers; when they are activated, you will now have a choice. You can resort to the existing response, or you can opt for a different way of being. What will that be? Practice it and, over time, your new way of being will replace the old way in your neural networks and muscle memory.
It’s not just about what you are doing. It’s also about who you are being. And it’s about focusing on becoming a better version of yourself every day.
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