Three Words That Will Transform Your Career

Sometimes we like to keep it simple at Leadership Unleashed and with Snowjam 2014 exploding everyone’s plans, this seemed like a good week for simplicity.  So for this week's post, I'll point you to a piece called Three Words That Will Transform Your Career.  Many headlines these days seem to oversell what follows, so this post is a nice contrast because I actually think it undersells the content.  I think these are three words that could change not just your career, but your life.  This is seemingly simple but pretty profound advice.   Enjoy!

Taming the Email Beast

One resource that leaders never have enough of is time.  Strong time management requires you to say no and set priorities, which is something most of us can continually improve.  One of the biggest time-wasters is email.

Don’t get me wrong:  Email has provided some helpful benefits.  It allows you to keep a record of your communications and allows you to send information to people without being concerned about whether they are available at that time.  But most people use email a little addictively, checking it constantly and allowing it to take time away from more important tasks.  We also use it a little delusionally, believing it’s possible to check email while being productive at other things, despite the neuroscience research that explodes the multi-tasking myth.  Smartphones have only magnified this phenomenon.

So how do we fix this?  How do we put email in its place and use it as a tool but not a driver of our work lives?  Here are some tips.  (Some of these come from a book called, appropriately enough, Never Check Email in the Morning by Julie Morgenstern, which I highly recommend). 

1. Like Ms. Morganstern says, don’t check email until at least an hour into your day.  I’ll give you a minute to pick yourself up off the floor.  Yes.  I said wait an hour to check your email.  Use that hour to do the most critical task of that day.  Spend a minute or two at the end of the previous day deciding what that will be and then do it.  You will start your day with an important accomplishment, regardless of what vortex of crazy ensues from that point forward.  If you work in an industry that has mission-critical emails first thing in the morning, such as orders that come in overnight and must be filled immediately, move that hour to immediately after you look at the critical emails.
2. Turn off your email and only read and answer emails during set times during the day.  Most people fear that they are missing out on something by doing this, but it’s important to begin seeing that email is not for urgent matters.  Try setting times – say, 10 am, 2 pm, and 4 pm – as email times.
3. Answer emails immediately if you can do it in 2 minutes or less.  Productivity expert David Allen recommends that emails that require more than two minutes should be delayed.  You can move it to the end of your designated email checking time or to another of those time slots later in the day.  Then you can power through the quickies and reserve time for your more thoughtful responses.
4. If you genuinely can’t turn off your email or need to baby-step your way into it, at least turn the email alert sound off.  It’s almost impossible to ignore and takes you out of the flow of whatever you are working on.
5. If an email string involves two or more replies, use the phone or in-person discussions to address the issue.  If you need a record of what was decided, send a quick summary email after you talk.
6. Set your outbox so that it delays sending by 5 minutes to help avoid those “Oops, I forgot to include this” follow up emails.  This will also help you avoid the dreaded “I really wish I hadn’t sent that” emails.
7. Train yourself and others.  Ask them to use the phone or in-person discussions if an email is more than two paragraphs.  Morganstern recommends that you should state right at the top or in the subject line what you want from the receiver – please review and advise, double-check, etc. -- especially if you simply must send a long email.   Help others understand that email is not instant message and anything urgent should be handled by phone, text, or in person.
8. Realign your priorities.  If you wear your “I leave every day at zero inbox” priority like a badge of honor, rethink this.  In most workplaces, there are much more important tasks to be done each day than responding to each and every email on the same day. 
9. Use the organization tools in your email solution.  Some allow you to set rules so that newsletters, blog updates, and “FYI” type emails will go to a file to be read later.  Set alerts to remind you to reply to an email by a certain date or time.

These are a few tips to get you started with keeping email in perspective, allowing it to serve you and not vice versa. 

What other tips have you found to be helpful in taming the email beast?

Effective Leadership Practices, Part 4

Periodically over the preceding weeks, I’ve summarized the effective practices of servant leadership as described by Kent M. Keith, in The Case for Servant Leadership.  Those practices include self-awareness, listening, changing the pyramid, developing your colleagues, coaching (not controlling) and unleashing the energy and intelligence of others.  (If you’d like to review the posts, the links will take you back to each). The final effective leadership practice that Keith describes is foresight.  Foresight in this context is identical to what is more commonly called “vision” and I will use the terms interchangeably here.

Foresight is the ability to visualize the future, to anticipate the needs of your organization and industry, as well as to envision the impact you want to have.  In The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf (the originator of servant leadership) speaks of foresight as the leadership skill.  He believed it was so important that he considered a lack of foresight to be an ethical failure because it prevents the leader to act for the good of his team or organization (Greenleaf, 2008).  Without it, he believed the leader is not leading, she’s reacting.  Leadership without vision and foresight is management. 

Greenleaf was not alone in seeing vision as the sine qua non of leadership. If you Google “vision and leadership” and you will receive a host of references, blog posts, books, and other exhortations of leaders to develop vision. 

So the natural next question is, how do you develop vision?  Kouzes and Posner (2009) note the importance of taking time out from pressing work matters to think and ask questions of yourself and your environments.  The leader must keep principles at the forefront, asking who do we want to be as an organization and as individuals?  What needs to change within the scope of our influence and what’s our role in bringing it about?  The visionary leader must listen to others and plug into her professional environment, seeking to constantly understand it (and predict it) better.  Finally, reflection is critical to vision.  None of the previous activities are worth the time if there isn’t a period of reflection in which they can all be synthesized. 

Do you agree with the idea that vision is the central characteristic of leadership?  Why or why not? 

How do you find time to withdraw and reflect on your own vision? 

Greenleaf, R. K. (2008).  The servant as leader. Westfield, IN:  The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.

Keith, K. M. (2008). The case for servant leadership. Westfield, IN:  The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.

Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2009).  To lead, create a shared vision.  Harvard Business Review.  Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2009/01/to-lead-create-a-shared-vision/ar/1

The Happy Life or the Meaningful Life?

I recently read some fascinating research out of Stanford University that examines the happy life and the meaningful life.  I think it provides some insight for both leaders and graduate students, both of whom engage in activities that may require sacrifice and difficulty.  These actions may not make us happy in the immediate sense, but they add depth and meaning to our lives and those of others.

The full article can be found here, and I recommend it.  It’s not a lengthy piece.  Here are the points I’ve been chewing on since reading it:

1.  The happy life and the meaningful life are often not the same.  Meaningful experiences almost always mean that you will encounter stresses, obstacles, and challenges; otherwise, the opportunity for impact would not exist.  Examples would be parenting, doing social work, or being in graduate school.  Happiness is about getting what you want and need without challenges and struggles, which brings zing to our lives but not necessarily meaning.
2. Happiness is often about superficial things and taking, while meaning is about deeper relationships and giving.  Having coffee with a friend where you are silly and laugh a lot makes you happy but doesn’t ultimately provide much meaning.  Having coffee with a friend who you counsel and advise through a terrible personal situation may be stressful, but it has tremendous impact and meaning. 
3. The in-the-moment, “hakuna matata” mindset makes you happy but linking together past, present, and future increases meaningfulness. (You’re welcome for the hakuna matata earworm, by the way.)  The Stanford research showed that thinking about the past, present, and future makes you less happy but it’s the only way to create a more meaningful life.  

For most of us, our goal is to balance both superficial happiness and deeper meaning.  But I think this research could help with some of those more challenging...er, meaningful times.  The next time you have to talk to a colleague about something stressful or you have to sacrifice doing something fun to do your academic work, think about this idea.  Understand that you are increasing the meaning in your life and the lives of others through your actions today.

This research was somewhat surprising to me, as I’d never thought of happiness and meaning as so dichotomous.  What is your reaction?

I tend to believe that a meaningful life is the path to a happy life, but this research would seem to cast doubt on this idea.  What do you think?

How do you help colleagues, friends, and family to find create meaningful lives or find meaning in difficulty?