6 minute read
Leadership
Fully charged leadership
WHAT: VSCPA KnowledgeNOW Conference
WHO: 245 in-person attendees, 27 via simulcast
WHERE: Williamsburg Lodge
WHEN: May 15–16, 2017
TOP THEMES: Business climate, technology, leadership, communication A car with an empty gas tank won’t go anywhere, and the same concept is true of organizations. A leader who isn’t fully engaged and ready to leave does his or her organization no favors. So how can you make sure you’re providing your organization with the engaged leadership it needs?
Chip Colbert, cofounder and executive director of the Fully Charged Institute (FCI), deals with that issue every day. His session, at the KnowledgeNOW Conference, “Fully Charged Leadership,” covered how to find meaning in your life and work and using that meaning to be a more effective leader.
Colbert founded the FCI after a 20-year career as a U.S. Army officer, and his experiences with military command informed his second career. He witnessed all types of leadership, both effective and ineffective, while in the Army, and he saw what can happen under pressure when a leader isn’t in a good place.
“The worst thing you can do as a leader and a human being is to be that inconsistent Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When pressure gets high, you just snap and take heads off around you,” he said. “From my military experience, we have this antiquated notion of the strong, stoic leader who doesn’t feel emotion and has all the answers. We put a lot of stock into that strong leader prototype. But research shows that the strongest leaders aren’t those who pretend they don’t feel emotion. It’s those who can regulate and manage.”
Colbert focused on three main factors in his session — meaning, interactions and energy — and how they play into one another. Meaningful work is the base of the pyramid. If you don’t find meaning in your work, you won’t be as effective. He cited
leadership
a study from an Israeli radiology department that spoke to the importance of even small increases in meaning.
“They thought radiologists weren’t doing their due diligence and brought in researchers to assess the problem,” Colbert said. “One group did what they were usually doing, and the second group, all they did was append a small picture of the patient to the X-ray. Twenty percent longer reports came out of that group, and there was 46 percent more diagnostic accuracy. When you see meaning, you create more.”
Part of that meaning involves initiating work rather than responding to issues, which is a major issue for workers in the U.S. and abroad. The average American spends 8.5 hours a day in front of a screen, unlocks his or her smartphone 110 times per day and spends 50 percent of his or her time checking emails and social media.
“It has almost become acceptable in today’s environment that just managing your inbox is a good day’s work,” Colbert said. “You fire up your email, see what you need to respond to and just sit there. Does that mean you’re going to go home and say you had a productive day?”
That practice comes from the tone set at the top of an organization. Leaders who set the expectation that emails must be dealt with quickly, even during off hours, create an environment where emails are the most important part of the job. That may be true in some cases, but it also means workers are tied to their smartphones at home, at the expense of their families. And that deprives them of a major source of meaning in their lives.
Family is another source of a main element of Colbert’s theory — interactions. He divides the day into “moments,” or three-second windows, and calculates that humans experience approximately 1,200 moments per hour, or 19,200 per day. Those interactions can add or subtract energy — and the subtractions are more damaging than you might think.
“Research shows that the negative interactions absolutely have more weight,” Colbert said. “When you have a good day at work, then drive home and someone cuts you off in traffic, what are you going to talk about? How do you try to set yourself up, and set up those around you, to have as many positive interactions as possible?
People who say they have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs, and positive interactions are a major part of that. They’re more likely to want to be part of a team and to be engaged with that team. How you view the people around you, and how you interact with them, also plays a major role. Acting with more intent and assuming positive intent from others has real effects on your energy levels, and it’s a major way you can help others stay fully charged.
“So many of us are achievers. We write the thing we need to do down and we check it off,” Colbert said. “It’s what motivates us. When I do something not on my list, I go back, write it down and check it off. But how often, as we’re so focused on achieving and knocking things down, do we give ourselves that moment of recognition for a small victory? And how good are you at doing that for those around you?”
Those moments of recognition can help recharge our energy banks, which is the third leg of Colbert’s energy stool. Assuming positive intent helps raise positive energy, and acting with intent leads to success and positive feelings, which has the same affect. But there are other, more traditional ways to increase your energy level.
“The more you can get away from the highly processed, refined stuff and get back to a natural state, the better,” Colbert said. “And the amount of sugar we consume is incredible. What you put into your system really makes a huge difference in your health and overall well-being, and you should be conscious of how much sugar you put into your body, and there’s sugar in everything. The more natural, the closer to raw, the better.”
Exercise also helps stimulate brain activity, and sleep is important as well. Colbert saw plenty of evidence of that during his time in the military, the most famously sleep-deprived institution of them all. Even small tweaks like changing the temperature of your bedroom — a couple of degrees cooler than the rest of your house is ideal — can lead to real improvements in energy.
Colbert’s main point is that personal well-being is a strong predictor of high performance at work. Ruthlessly prioritizing your personal well-being enables you to perform better and do more for others, which leads to sustainable high performance.
“When you fly somewhere and they’re talking about the oxygen masks in an emergency, you’re told to put your own on first,” he said. “When you put your own on first, you’re going to be okay and able to help those around you. Why don’t we think about that in terms of our own well-being?”
Download a whitepaper on the conference, including sessions like “Fully Charged Leadership” and “Effective Communication: Adapting to Various Communication Styles in the Workplace,” at vscpa.com/KnowledgeNOW2017. n
