Letting Go
I try to have a habit each morning of meditating and setting my intentions for the day. Ten minutes seems about right to push through ten hours of work personalities, responsibilities, spouse time, and kid time, right?
As an HR professional, I am often the calm, neutral, encouraging, or challenging person that shares the space of both the best times of life – job offers, promotions, personal milestones like growing families. And I equally share the hardest times of life – loss, disaster, and sadness. It can be all-consuming.
Creating Balance
A thoughtful practice to stay engaged yet detached is key to leadership.
Without awareness, I most often gravitate toward the illusion of control. My go-to exercise for dealing with any change or stress is building, rearranging, or organizing something. Tangibly creating order distracts me and allows me to avoid the discomfort. I love control. I think I can fix anything. I think I’ve got a solution. A way. My understanding doesn’t always reflect reality.
With awareness, I can identify where I am intersecting with the situation, not respond emotionally. I also have the opportunity to think through and direct my thoughts. Most importantly, I permit myself.
To feel the joy or sadness of the circumstance.
To have compassion for my cowardly side that would do ANYTHING to avoid delivering negatively impactful life-changing news.
To accept where I need support or guidance to handle a situation outside my experience or depth.
To recognize my insignificance and embrace the control I do have, I get out of the way and keep space for others’ reactions.
To open myself to the good and the bad. The celebratory and the life-shattering. The mundane and significant.
Setting Intentions
Being a worthy leader takes intentionality, time, and practice. Sometimes it means going it alone. Or faking it until you make it. Or embracing honest reflection translates into how you approach any high or low for yourself, your team, or your organization. Along the way, great lessons are learned from failures, and small successes spur you on.