The Opening

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We all come across these moments in our careers: something shifts, and suddenly we find ourselves in a bigger role than the one we signed up for.

That “something” that changed could be many things, but the most common is someone who was senior to us quitting or taking on a new role.

This shift creates an opening.

And the question is: what are we going to do with it?

We’ve known for a while that we could play bigger, that we don’t feel as seen as we want to, that we are a bundle of as-yet-unrealized potential.

At the same time, we must fight our natural sense of inertia—the object that we are tends to stay in motion in the direction it has been heading—and we carry with us, always, a dollop of fear.

The Opening moment is the perfect chance to do away with all of this: a gap not of our making has appeared, and the downside to stepping up is almost zero.

So why not take a swing? Why not you? Why not now?

Quietly, there are lots of people rooting for you, lots of people who believe in you, people who know you are ready for the next thing.

This is what opportunity looks like.

Go ahead and grab it.

 

The One Non-Negotiable Trait of Great Team Leaders

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At a workshop I facilitated a few weeks ago, we asked everyone to share, in small groups, the characteristics of the most effective leader they had ever worked with.

The most common behavior they mentioned was: this is someone who always has my back.

It makes sense, and aligns with Reed Hastings’ / Netflix ideas about how to think about our working relationships: we are not a family, we are a high-performing sports team. From the Netflix Culture page:

A family is about unconditional love. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best possible teammate, caring intensely about your team, and knowing that you may not be on the team forever. Dream teams are about performance, not seniority or tenure. It is up to the manager to ensure that every player is amazing at their position, plays effectively with others and is given new opportunities to develop. That’s how we keep winning the championship (entertaining the world). Unlike a sports team, as Netflix grows, the number of players also grows. We work to foster players from the development leagues so they can become the stars of tomorrow.

The best teammates, and the best bosses, are the ones who make you better, the ones you can rely on, the ones that will back you up if someone comes after you and catch you if you fall.

The story could end here, but it doesn’t.

Back at the workshop, we moved from small breakout groups to the full group.

In the report out, the “someone who has my back” headline subtly got transformed into “someone who protects their team,” and not everyone noticed at first how different these two things were.

Yes, great leaders protect—give cover to—their teams. But that is hardly enough.

“Protection” and “having your back” are not the same thing.

When I have your back, that means that I am there to support you, to be your advocate, to ensure that you are operating in a context where you can always succeed.

And that also means that, in private, I am telling you the hard truths, sharing where I think you have more to give, expressing to you what I know is possible for you and for us. I’m a coach, to be sure, and I’m one who tells you the whole story.

That’s a much broader remit than someone who only protects her team. Someone whose headline is “protection” is prioritizing safety and may be shying away from productive conflict and from the messages that need, over time, to be heard.

You can see this distinction play out in Google’s lessons from how to create great teams, based on research they conducted over two years looking at 180 teams.

The five characteristics Google identified as mattering the most were:

  1. Dependability: I talked about this in Teamwork, partnership, culture, and passing the ball
  2. Structure and clarity: well defined roles and goals
  3. Meaning: “the work has personal significance to each member”
  4. Impact: “the group believes their work is purposeful and positively impacts the greater good.”
  5. Psychological Safety: “A situation in which everyone is safe to take risks…A culture where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees can let down their guard.”

Someone who protects their team is likely providing psychological safety, and that’s important enough that it makes the Top 5 list. But limiting ourselves to “protecting” team members means we’re playing a narrow role, one in which we’re more likely to see ourselves as a filter or a buffer between what we see and what they see.

That’s certainly helpful some of the time: when a team member lacks confidence in certain tasks; when they are newer; when the team is forming and the bonds between folks, and the resilience of the team as a whole, is low.

But in the long run, protection alone is not enough.

We have each other’s back by buffering sometimes, filtering others, but, also, by providing real clarity of role and expectation, of potential, of upside.

And, most of all, we have each other’s back by communicating our clear conviction that we know this person can be great, and that we will walk with them down the path to greatness.

At the Beginning

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At the outset of any professional relationship, there’s a period of definition. A time when both parties are figuring out “how this is going to work.”

Each person goes in with their own set point and expectations, based on their preferences and experience.

Their behaviors at the outset communicate how much this relationship will be similar to / different from those expectations. Things like:

  • Content: what topics are in or out
  • Tone: how formal or informal
  • Communication style: pithy to verbose
  • Pace: how quickly we respond (communicates: how important are these things versus all my other things)
  • Energy: high or low
  • Structure: high or low
  • Deadlines: are hit early / always / sometimes / never
  • Follow up: airtight / pretty good / loose / terrible

Especially with remote working relationships, our first few interactions are amplified.

They communicate what sort of path we are both on.

So it might be worth thinking twice: what are you communicating with that second email, that third Slack message, the time you propose for a first call, or how good your first deliverable is to someone new?

Human beings are hard-wired to fill in the blanks.

You can use that to your advantage.

It’s Probably Me

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When you see something important that has to be done.

And are wondering: who’s going to step up to do that…?

It seems like a fair question.

After all, there’s someone else who knows better, who has more authority than you, more experience, or is better placed for one of 10 other reasons.

But the fact that you noticed means something: about what you’re able to see (taste), about your orientation (how much you care), and, therefore, about your ability to make that thing happen.

Plus, the act of doing something when it’s not obviously your job makes a positive impact on the culture.

The right answer is nearly never to stay on the sidelines, or to stay within the boundaries of what’s written in your job description.

The person everyone is waiting for is you.

(HT: Sting)

Loved it or Hated It

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I’ve just finished up a once-in-a-lifetime two-week tour of India with my college-aged son. We had an unforgettable experience across North and South India.

I entered this trip with some trepidation. India is not the easiest place to be a tourist, and our itinerary was aggressive: 7 different locations, 4 flights, and all but one of the cities we visited was new to me.

The second half of our trip, in the South Indian state of Kerala, was more tranquil, and I had the time to catch up on my yoga practice. One morning while in Kumarakom, I did a 95 minute on-demand class taught by an old friend and one of my favorite yoga teachers, Rolf Gates.

At the start of the class, Rolf tells the story of driving his then-7-year-old son to a new gym class. Before being dropped off, Rolf’s son announces:

“After the class, I will tell you if I loved it or I hated it.” Laughter ensues.

Rolf goes on to explain what we all, on some level, know: that it is this kind of binary, reactive, judgmental mindset that is the source of our suffering.

And yet, that thinking was exactly what I carried going into this trip: nervous about so many unknowns, I slipped into the most reactive version of myself, approaching each new situation a bit like Rolf’s 7-year-old son. My involuntary judgmental filter made nothing better—even when the answer was “loved it.”

I spent a while being reactive and judgmental with myself about my reactive nature….

And then it occurred to me that this is not how I approach all things. It is, instead, how I approach some new things. I started to think about it like this:

For things that are Core activities for me, whether professional or personal, I’m not particularly reactive: because I have significant experience with things in this realm, I’ve cultivated the ability to stay present and not be crashed against the rocks of my own judgmental thoughts.

For example, in a work context I’ve had tons of difficult conversations. Most of the time, I manage to stay grounded during these conversations, and I don’t get hijacked by reactive thoughts screaming “This is BAD. Make it STOP.”

Similarly, I’ve had enough experience with exercise to know that the feeling that something is hard or unpleasant is not meaningful, so I can stay far away from Good or Bad mindset.

This got me thinking that the more useful diagram looks something like this:

My level of reactivity is in inverse proportion to how new and unfamiliar an activity or role is.

(Aside: I think “role” matters as much as “activity” here. Meaning, in my professional role, which I occupy every day, everything feels less new—even being in India. But “tourist in India” is a new role for me, one where I feel less confident or clear.)

If this framing resonates for you, then there are a few important conclusions.

First, we know that most important work has elements that are hard or unpleasant. This means that our path to making a meaningful impact requires us to move towards challenging situations, to stay grounded in them, and to manage through them successfully.

We have to get good at persisting through the hard bits.

And the best way to persist is turn down our reactivity, to be less subject to the “this is GOOD / this is BAD” narrative that pushes against us achieving our goals.

This means that—referring back to the diagram—we have two jobs.

One is to recognize that we react differently to new things. This awareness alone helps us turn down our reactive voice or, at least, pay it less heed.

Second, we have to take steps to move new but important activities towards the center of the diagram. We make the unfamiliar familiar through concerted exposure and repetition. And we will get better at hard things by doing them more often.

Importantly, we improve not only because our skillfulness increases. We get better because our increased exposure decreases our reactiveness.

Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach and Amanda Doyle remind us each week in their podcast that We Can Do Hard Things. That’s true.

But perhaps the headline should be: we must choose to do hard things.

A Place to Do Your Work

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The perfect pencil, or chair, or lighting aren’t required.

But we all need a place to do our work.

A place that says to our unconscious mind: this is where I get it done.

Our tools are close at hand.

Our mind clicks into gear.

And, because we are here, we get to skip the discussion with ourselves about whether we feel up for it today, whether we are inspired, energetic or motivated.

This is our workplace, here we are, so we work.

None of this guarantees an outcome—having the right place is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition.

Meaning that if we don’t have a place we do our work, our job is infinitely harder.

Here’s hoping that you had your place in place in 2023, and that it was a productive year for you.

And here’s wishing that you create that place for yourself in 2024 if you haven’t yet.

The world needs the best from you, the things that only you can produce.

So do us all the favor of giving yourself your best chance to produce your best.

Sight Reading

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I played classical piano seriously for nearly 20 years. I practiced for a half hour every day when I was a little kid and three hours a day or more when I was in college.

Despite my hard work and commitment, I was a terrible sight reader, which meant I was very slow to learn new pieces. It didn’t come naturally, and over time I resigned myself to this reality: I was good at a lot of aspects of playing the piano, but sight reading wasn’t one of them.

About a decade ago I was talking with my kids’ piano teacher, and I shared how long it took me to learn new pieces. Casually, she said something that unlocked it for me: “I just think about it like reading the words on a page. Words are familiar, as are sentences and paragraphs, and I just think of it like that.”

I don’t know why that stuck with me, but it did, and suddenly sight reading made sense. And, even though I don’t play piano much at all these days, I now can learn a piece at least three times faster than I used to—I’m not a great sight reader, but I’m much better than I was.

Looking back, I can’t help but reflect on what could have been had I figured this out sooner.

By my math, I clocked somewhere around 8,000 hours of piano practice from the time I was 6 until I was 22, enough to become an expert by nearly any measure.

However, I also now see that I wasted a tremendous proportion of these 8,000 hours. Something like one third of all my practice time was spent slowly and inefficiently learning pieces.

Think about that: one-third of the time I devoted—to one of the things I’m best at in the world—completely lost.

What could the fix have been?

While I’d like to think that a more evolved version of my 10-year-old self could have somehow figured this out on my own, I doubt it.

What would have made the difference was if a teacher had said to me, “You have to learn this new piece in a week.”

I’d have struggled and failed, but hopefully she would have said it to me again and again and again.

And at the end of what would have been a miserable year for my young self, I’m sure I would have cracked the code. And then I would have walked a different path, a more productive path, with the remaining 6,000 hours of piano practice that lay ahead.

Imagine all the ways, big and small, we skip the most essential steps and unwittingly undermine the long, hard hours we’re otherwise putting in, including:

Day to day stuff like learning to type, or becoming really comfortable with using and learning new technologies.

New stuff like using AI every day, until it becomes second nature to us.

Hard stuff like, if we say we want to write well, forcing ourselves to write badly and often.

Rigorous stuff like developing a discipline of shipping our work on time.

Personal growth stuff like ensuring we’re getting enough feedback, so we can develop an accurate picture of our strengths and growth areas.

And healthy living stuff, like developing a balance relationship with food or sleep.

These are just some of the many gateways that are precursors to making the time we invest later yield more.

Nothing special needs to happen: we just need to decide to go back to the steps we’d skipped or glossed over, and reconcile ourselves to the fact that getting this important stuff right won’t, at first, be much fun.

Or we can find an accountability partner, someone like my hypothetical teacher to crack the whip and hold us to a high, and temporarily uncomfortable, standard.

And, of course, if we supervise or mentor other people, it might be time to be the whip-cracking teacher, as an investment in the long term.

One way or another, we owe it to ourselves to get the core skills right first, before it’s too late.

What Work Should I (and only I) Do?

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A while back, I wrote about the Six Stages of Kevin Kelly. It’s a reflection on an essay by Kevin Kelly with leadership lessons about what you spend your time on over the course of your career The hierarchy he presents goes like this:

Stage 1: Don’t Screw Up. “When you start your first job, all your attention is focused on not screwing up.”

Stage 2: Learn New Things. “At this stage, working smart means doing more than is required.”

Stage 3: Exploration.  “Working smart here means trying as many roles as you can in order to discover what you are best at.”

Stage 4: Doing the Right Task. “It takes some experience to realize that a lot of work is better left undone.”

Stage 5: Doing things well and with love. “At this stage, you can begin to do only the jobs that you are good at doing and that need to be done.  And what a joy that is!”

This seems like a natural-enough progression for the motivated, reflective self-starter who wants to learn and be useful. It evolves from fear of messing up to pushing past our comfort zones to playing around with what work we do and do not do to have the most impact.

And, wouldn’t the pinnacle of that evolution be “doing only the jobs that you are good at doing and that need to be done?”

Alas, no, that too is just the penultimate step.

There’s a step beyond that that is about doing the jobs that only you can do. Not all the jobs you’re best at; not all the jobs that need to be done…but just the jobs that you and only you can do.

I’ve sat with this idea for a while as I’ve become more senior. It’s not an easy one to implement for a lot of reasons, not least of which because of how satisfying it is to do important work that needs to be done: this is meaningful work that creates value for everyone…and Kevin’s saying that this is work that we should NOT be doing, because someone else can do it well.

Sticking with the things that ONLY you can do is different: it means spending more of your time dancing with uncertainty; more of your time trying to figure out what to do; more of your time willing to be wrong, willing to do things with uncertain payoffs, willing to do things that are hard(er) to measure.

And here’s the kicker: even these goalposts keep changing. Because your organization’s competence keeps changing, the people around you keep changing and growing, and, over time, the things that only you could do well become things that others around you can also do well.

What a gift that is, and what a challenge.

It means that, if we’re doing this right, our jobs never stay static; the role our organization needs us to play keeps on changing.

It means that, the moment we really, truly figure something out is probably the moment when we should teach it to someone else.

And it means that the moment we are really comfortable, something about our mindset or our team’s growth has gotten off track.

No time to be comfortable, but comfort is overrated.

 

Stage Manager on Mac OS 14.1.1 Sonoma

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday, I stumbled across this lovely, hidden feature in the new Mac operating system, so I thought I’d share in a short bonus post.

It’s called Stage Manager and you activate it in the same desktop menu where Do Not Disturb lives.

When you turn on Stage Manager, images of your most recent active apps appear in live windows on your desktop. This makes switching between apps seamless, and, as a bonus, these are actual live windows (e.g. if it’s a Zoom call that you’ve jumped away from, you’ll still see the live video call in the small window on the left).

There are, of course, additional ways to play around with the display—info is here—but for me, a relentless user of Command+⌘ to toggle between apps, the core functionality of a better way to switch between apps is what matters to me.

Enjoy.

 

Doing the High Value Thing Quickly

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This is one of the unspoken skills of highly effective people.

It’s a skill of identification and of action.

Both of these require excellent diagnosis, pattern recognition, and confidence.

To be clear, the diagnosis is two-fold: when to act, and when it’s your job not to act or let someone else act.

And the confidence is paired with humility: not “I believe in myself the most, always” but, “I know this is really important. I’m confident, based on my experience, about what needs to be done. And I’m willing to be on the hook for the results.”

Supporting skills include the ability to task switch when necessary; comfort with risk; the willingness to act with incomplete information; and the discipline not to procrastinate.