How To Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ To Work.
Edition #139
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
A Self-Care Checklist for Leaders.
As a leader, what time do you spend taking care of yourself?
This question seems simple, but it has profound implications on your energy, focus, longevity and success as a leader.
Palena Neale is a leadership coach, mentor, and educator. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Unabridged. In her article in HBR, she shared her thoughts about the self-care checklist for leaders.
Here are some key insights and takeaways for you:
What stops you from caring for yourself? Identify one or two small changes you can make this week and commit to implementing them on a regular basis. For behaviour change, consistency is key.
Have a body budget - Investing in your diet, exercise, and sleep (however difficult) brings positive mental and physical rewards and improves your mood and functioning at work.
Measure your emotional health - Two main areas that significantly influence leaders’ emotional health are the ability to regulate emotions and the ability to relax. Ask yourself these questions:
‘What happens when you feel big or strong emotions? What do you think, feel, and do?’
‘How can I be more precise about what I am feeling, or what I’ve observed in others, to gain a more accurate view of what is going on?’
‘What conversation do you want/need to have? And with whom?’
Think about your relationships with others - Science tells us that our brains collaborate with other brains. Collaboration influences our neurons’ tuning process and strengthens certain neural connections to regulate our bodily functions with others.
Create Choice Points: As humans, we crave for autonomy, which implies choice. Choice brings into focus our level of comfort with asking for what we want or need, as well as being aware of the consequences of action and inaction of ourselves and others.
Invest in your growth and nourishment: Cordon off time for parenting, learning, or community mobilization. Invest time in nourishing activities—like singing, college visits, mindfulness, and time with your parents.
Read the entire article here.
The Art and Science Of The One-On-One With Professor Steven Rogelberg.
Most of you may have one-on-one meetings at work every day. How can you better plan, prepare, and manage these meetings? Dr Amantha Imber is an organizational psychologist and founder of behavioural science consultancy Inventium. She talks to Prof. Steven Rogelberg about one-on-one meetings.
Here are some key takeaways from this conversation and thoughts for you to reflect on and to use them in your one-on-one meetings:
One-on-one meetings are more important for your direct reports than for you. It does not matter if you need them, but they need them.
You need to have this one-on-one meeting, which is non-negotiable, and not do it only if you have the time. This meeting is not focused on tasks or deliverables but on checking how your direct reports are doing—long-term, short-term, big picture, small picture and the challenges they face in accomplishing what they want to achieve at work, personally, etc.
One-on-one conversations allow you to espouse your values as a leader.
The direct reports' preparation for this one-on-one conversation is as necessary as it is for the manager—for example, they can reflect on what they need, disclose what they want, and ask for help during these conversations.
Before the meeting, it is a good idea to prepare a list of items to discuss or have a core set of questions from the manager and the direct report. The list and questions of the direct reports get priority over the manager’s list.
During these conversations, seek thoughtful responses from the direct report rather than automated responses. How you tweak your questions makes a difference. For example, a question like ‘How are you?’ gets an automated response. Learning to tweak the same question to help open up a candid and meaningful conversation can make a big difference to the conversation.
Closing the one-on-one conversation is about clarifying what both of you agreed on, and finding nuggets that allow the conversation to end optimistically, even if difficult things were discussed, is vital.
Listen to the entire episode on:
How To Transform A Company’s Culture (Stories from Apple, Google & Uber.)
What does it take to transform a company’s culture? Some interesting stories were shared at the Master of Scale Summit recently. Here are some key takeaways:
Being authentic and transparent is the fundamental building block of culture building and transformation.
The importance of leaders sharing why employees need to do what they must do every day at work is vital. Culture building begins with context setting, and the context may be something that may happen in the future, but it is essential to believe it will happen and talk about it today.
Bring your ‘whole self’ to work. The more you get to the top, the more human you have to be.
Sometimes, culture is about stating ‘what we aren’t’.
Leadership is all about the drive for excellence. Being willing to accept that ‘anything is not good enough’ and that we can get better needs to be repeatedly reiterated, as culture can become static and staid over time.
Finally, what is culture? When the team's values are aligned, they trust each other, and there are ‘natural handoffs’ between them, it unlocks creative thinking and innovation. Culture is like this giant personality that lives and breathes these moments through a network of people who work there.
You can click on the above link and watch this video.
How To Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ To Work.
Eric Schmidt makes a powerful reference to ‘Bringing your ‘whole self’ to work.’ What does it really mean if you have to bring your whole self to work?
You often get stuck with many behaviours, standard leadership templates, imagery, and assumptions about many things that you believe must be done at work and in your personal life. Here are some examples of how it comes to play in your mind and head:
“As a leader, I need to know all the answers.”
“As a senior leader, I cannot afford to make any mistakes.”
“As a team member, I cannot say I don’t know because I am unsure how others will perceive or judge me.”
“I will not ask questions because I cannot look stupid in front of others.”
“ As a manager, I must always sound or make others feel I am in control of the project or situation.”
“Top performers means they should seldom fail.”
“I must outthink others and have a solution to any problem posed to me.”
“As a boss, I have to always behave or be seen as being super productive and efficient.”
“I cannot bring or attend to some immediate or urgent family priorities during my work day.”
“As a parent, I must not be seen as ignorant in front of my child.”
It’s not uncommon for you to identify or encounter people who exhibit these behaviours or attitudes at your workplace, or you may have interacted with such people outside or from other companies, too.
In the words of author Mike Robbins, “You must be comfortable with bringing your fears, your imperfections, and your quirks to the forefront when you are working as a professional. Being authentic takes a lot of courage. Letting the world see who you truly are can be a scary process.” When you are not your ‘authentic’ self as a leader or colleague, especially in the way you behave, express your ideas and thoughts, have a working style that makes you feel genuine to yourself first, be comfortable with being seen as vulnerable, you then end up putting up a ‘show’ in front of others. Most people in your company or team ‘see through’ this charade, and such people lose others’ trust fast. If you are not authentic, you can’t stay true to what you say and do over time.
You can only achieve excellence in your craft or profession if you bring your ‘whole self’ to work. That’s when you do things with conviction and bring to play your deeply held beliefs and core values. When you encourage others to follow the same behaviour and accept them openly, within commonly accepted norms, the foundation for work ethic and culture is formed by the individual and teams across the company.
It’s not rare to see teams within companies with a slightly different culture from most other teams within the same company. When you deeply observe these teams, you see that the leader and individual people within these teams are the ones who make this happen. They bring their authentic self and values to the fore in these teams.
Achieving mastery or developing a great culture is built and sustained only when you or your team bring your ‘whole self’ to your work.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
If you want to change your behaviour, consistency in making the change happen is vital.
In one-on-one meetings, you must seek thoughtful, not automated responses to initiate a genuine and trustworthy conversation.
Authenticity and transparency are the fundamental building blocks of culture building and transformation.
Be comfortable bringing your fears, imperfections, and quirks to the forefront at work.