Mind the Gap (Just not That Gap)
Most of us are minding the wrong gap. When we’re at a train station, it’s pretty obvious which gap you need to be mindful of – the one between the platform and the train. Don’t drop your phone, misstep, or get your wheelie luggage stuck there. Almost every leader I coach is minding the wrong gap. They’re looking at all the places they’ve been told they fall short or need to get stronger, and they focus most of their attention there. The challenge with this strategy is that it runs counter to strengths-based leadership, which suggests that people learn more effectively when they build on their strengths. Focusing on strengths is often more engaging, less difficult, and easier for the brain to learn new things. Not to mention the costs associated with always focusing on where you need to improve. For instance… the exhaustion and mental fatigue of always pushing to do better, the inherent self-criticism, the crappy mood that you end up in as a result of both. All of this then bleeds into your interactions with others. But by staring too hard at that gap… you might be missing another one. The one between who you think you are and the one others already see. Most of the time, others see a bigger, bolder, smarter, more skilled version of ourselves than we see. And if we don’t see it, we do ourselves a big disservice. Here’s what I mean by that. Earlier in my coaching career, I held the belief that I shouldn’t be coaching C-suite leaders. It wasn’t true, but I was buying into it anyway. And for a while, it got in the way of my own growth. The fix is easier than you’d think. ⬇️ Show up as the version of you that you aspire to be. Even before you fully believe it. The gap worth paying attention to isn’t the one you’ve been staring at. So, how would the best version of you show up today?
“My brain is like a Muppet on acid.”
“My brain is like a Muppet on acid.” The above quote from a client – Head of HR – upon showing up for a coaching session. Mind you, the client in question looked completely put together. She definitely did not look like a Muppet on acid. Was she challenged that day? Sure. And, despite how she was feeling, she hadn’t lost her sense of humor and ability to pause and check in with herself. Virtually every client I’ve ever worked with has expressed some version of this (though maybe not as colorfully!) I’m exhausted on their behalf. It’s draining to maintain composure on the outside while you are running on fumes and your insides are churning. If you are currently in Muppet-mode right now (do we think I could trademark that? 🤔), here are two thoughts for you. First, you are in really good company. That alone I realize does not mitigate the blender that is currently your brain, but maybe it helps to know that you’re not the only one? When I started to realize that everyone experienced the same struggles in some fashion, and it wasn’t just me, that somehow put the blender on a lower speed. You can also check out my previous note → don’t forget to breathe. Second, take the acid trip as a sign that something is off and needs readjusting. Your nervous system is trying to tell you something. If I had a crystal ball, I’d just tell you what it was. But I don’t, so I can’t. This one is all you. So take everyone else out of the equation, forget about other people’s needs, wants, and expectations of you. Give yourself a quiet five minutes and ask yourself these three questions: Start there and see what happens. If all else fails, phone a friend. Tripping alone is no fun (so I’ve heard…) 🙂
Your Filters Are Broken
Picture this: You’re sitting in an All Hands. A senior leader mentions their top 10 business books. Your colleague texts you 3 podcast recommendations. There’s an HBR newsletter with 7 articles in your inbox, you have 48 browser tabs open, and a stack of “TBR” books are mocking you from your nightstand. Your first thought: “Great, these resources will help me level up.” Your second thought: “When exactly am I supposed to get through all this?” The second thought is the one that wreaks havoc on your confidence and makes you question whether you suck at your job. Because, obviously, the authors and podcasters have it all figured out while you’re still scrambling. Reminder: You don’t suck at leadership. But your filters are broken. About 15 years ago, Clay Shirky challenged the idea of information overload. His point: we’ve always had more information than we could consume. The problem isn’t the volume. It’s that our filtering systems can’t keep up. → Filter failure. Publishers used to do the filtering for us – they decided what was worth printing because it was expensive to print. Now, anyone can publish anything, which means we have to filter for ourselves. Most of us are terrible at it. If you’re drowning in tabs, articles, and podcasts, here are four ways to filter what you consume: 1. Values-based filtering: Before you read/listen to anything, ask, “Does this align with what matters most to me?” If your core value is connection, stop reading productivity hacks about eliminating meetings. 2. Identity-based filtering: Ask, “Does this fit who I want to be as a leader?” If you’re building toward being a decisive leader, stop consuming endless content about consensus-building. 3. Knowledge filtering: Leaders overconsume when they don’t trust what they already know. Most of what you’re reading is confirming what you already know or believe. You don’t need more input. Lead with what you’ve got. 4. Strategic elimination filtering: There are only so many hours in a week (168 to be precise). If something doesn’t support your top three priorities this week, month, or quarter, it doesn’t make the cut. Full stop. Fix your filters, and watch the overwhelm start to ease. Pick one to try. See what happens.
Everyone Needs a Big F’ing Exhale
Raise your hand if you’re exhausted. 🙋🏻‍♀️ Politically, we’re tapped out or tuned out. Personally, we’re stretched. Professionally, we’re walking a tightrope called “work/life balance.” And most of us are telling people we’re “fine.” We’re not fine. Nobody is. Everyone’s walking around holding their breath, waiting for something else to go sideways. You can’t control what’s happening around you. But you can control how you show up in the middle of it. You don’t need another productivity hack. You need to breathe. Here are three things you can try that don’t require a project plan or a Gantt chart. Name the reality: Leaders who acknowledge the weight people are carrying give their teams permission to be human. You don’t have to solve it. Just say it: “I know everyone’s carrying a lot right now.” Model the behavior: You can’t give your team permission to breathe if you’re white-knuckling everything yourself. Take the PTO. Leave at 5pm. Stop emailing at midnight. Tell people you’re also figuring this out. Leadership isn’t about being invincible. Check out this link if you need more ideas on cultivating broader wellbeing. Create space for others: Not every conversation needs to be productive. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is slow down, check in, and let people think out loud. You don’t have to fix what they share. Just listen. This is Leadership Fluency™ in action – showing up as a human while still moving the work forward. Different situations need different approaches. What worked last year might not work now. If you’re barely hanging on, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to have it all figured out. Permission to breathe, granted.
Please allow me to introduce myself…
“… I’m a Mann of wealth and taste.” – The Rolling Stones (Did you see what I did there? 🙂) Do you know someone who looks great on paper but is working way too hard, exhausting themselves and their team in the process? I bet you do! (Maybe it’s even you?) Hi, I’m Sarah! 🙋🏻‍♀️ I work with senior leaders who struggle to delegate, overthink decisions, and over-prepare for everything. They’re exhausting themselves and their teams because they don’t fully trust their own judgment. I help them ditch the doubt and lead with confidence and ease. How? → Through individual and group coaching, team development, and organizational programs that build sustainable leadership. My services guide is here, and my coaching philosophy is here. Sarah, why are you telling me this? I’m so glad you asked! Here’s why: OK, enough about me! Let’s talk about you! Enough About Me Seriously, when was the last time you reintroduced yourself at work? I don’t mean reminding people where you live, your job title and your kids’ names (though there’s nothing wrong with that.) How do you help people understand who you are today? You are not the same person you were a year ago or 10 years ago. Tell people the projects you enjoy, or what your superpower is. If you need help, I have some prompts for you below. Remember above where I said I’m not one for self-promotion? Well, that may also apply to you. So, really, when was the last time you re-introduced yourself? To your manager, your peers, stakeholders, team, or clients? Here are a few reasons to consider it: Many people say they hate self-promotion. Been there! But if you don’t prioritize yourself, no one else will. And you can do it in a non-cringey way. There is no right or wrong way to do this. What you choose to share with people will be driven by your personal situation, organization, tenure, etc. Here are a few script ideas to get you started. Who are you going to re-introduce yourself to? 🙂
3 Ways to Get Out of a Mental Funk
There are days when a funk settles in and won’t budge. I find myself stuck there sometimes. But… I remind myself that I have choices. I can keep fighting it and resisting how I feel, wallowing in my funkiness. Or, I can take action. Because I know that at the root of my challenge is actually not a thing or a person or a situation. It’s “cognitive distortions” – a story my brain is telling me. Our brains like to jump to conclusions, fill in the blanks, and then create a narrative for us that feels true, even if there is no supporting evidence. Sort of like a trailer for a movie that is certain never to hit the theaters. If you find yourself in a mental spiral that won’t quit, here are three steps that help me: 1. Label your emotions – Research* tells us that getting more specific with our emotions helps the brain regulate better. “I feel crappy” might be true, but it’s not useful. It’s too vague. When everything gets labeled as “I’m stressed,” the brain defaults to the same coping strategy over and over. (For me, that’s sleep.) If I name the emotion more precisely — angry, frustrated, disappointed — I’m giving my brain better data about what might actually help. Sleeping doesn’t do much for my anger. Doing something physical often does. 2. Look for the truth – Not the truth your brain is inventing. The real one. Because most of the shit my brain comes up with is definitively not true. Three questions, lightly adapted from Byron Katie, that help me: The stories my brain conjures up fall apart pretty quickly when I’m forced to separate facts from assumptions. Cold, hard evidence has a way of puncturing a good doom spiral. 3. Keep your head where your feet are – This is mindfulness in plain English. When your brain is spiraling, it’s almost always time traveling — replaying the past or rehearsing the future. I find it helpful to bring myself back to the present with the reminder: At this moment, all is well. That doesn’t mean hard things aren’t coming. It just means they aren’t happening right now. And that alone can calm the nervous system enough to take the next step. Funky days happen. The choice is what we do once we notice we’re in one. If today is one of those days for you, try one of these steps and see what shifts.
Things are Worse Than You Think (and That’s Good!)
Spoiler alert: I’m about to go philosophical on you. When we talk about coaching, there’s a lot of discussion about shifting perspectives and what a gift that can be. A true perspective shift doesn’t just change how you see something. It can change the amount of pressure you’re feeling. I listened to a podcast with Oliver Burkeman, which provided a shift in perspective that initially sounded bizarre and completely counterintuitive. But once it landed, it felt oddly freeing. The idea is this: things are generally worse than we think they are. Here’s my take on how he explained this concept. Things being “worse” could apply to anything – the state of a relationship, or something far more mundane, like the number of books stacked on your nightstand. At first blush, this sounds discouraging and possibly fatalistic. Because why on earth would it help to assume things are worse than we imagine? In this sense, however, we’re talking about “worse” as in there’s a sense of futility about things or situations. Here’s how it helped me. Allow me to introduce the to-do list. I think it’s safe to say that most of us believe that if we could just get everything done, we’d breathe a sigh of relief at being “caught up.” But every time you check something off the list, it usually just creates more tasks. In that regard, the list isn’t designed to end. It just keeps regenerating (kinda like a starfish…) Once you accept that the to-do list is fundamentally unfinishable, it becomes easier to stop trying so hard to Cross.Everything.Off. See? This is not a personal failure. This is just the nature of the to-do list! Such a relief! How about relationships? One of the biggest challenges many of us face is trying – consciously or unconsciously – to change someone else’s behavior. There are things about my spouse that drive me nuts. If I can accept the futility of getting him to change certain behaviors, there’s freedom in that. One more for you and then I’ll stop. I promise. The list of books I want to read would take multiple lifetimes to complete. When I stop pretending I might someday read them all, I can enjoy the one(s) I’m actually reading without guilt about the others. (The abandoned ones, the half-read ones waiting to be finished, the ones with pristine spines waiting to be cracked open…) What crystallized all of this for me was when Oliver (Mr. Burkeman? I don’t know the man and not sure how to address him!) shared the idea of sitting on a riverbank. You don’t sit on a riverbank beating yourself up about the water that already passed before you showed up, or stressing about the water you’ll miss when you leave. You sit. You dip your toes in. You experience what’s here and enjoy it. It’s impossible to experience all the water in the river. Your to-do list is a river. So is your reading list. So is most of life. The shift in perspective – and therefore the relief – comes when you stop trying to keep up with the current and start paying attention to where you are standing. Your call to action is to just notice where you might be resisting something. What happens when you apply the riverbank theory?Â
If You Want to Lead Well, Start by Protecting Your Energy
…it’s a great song (if 70’s music is your vibe), but it’s not a great leadership strategy. I’m writing this from my favorite local coffee shop. The owner is working today, doing what she always does – greeting everyone who walks in like she’s genuinely glad we’re here. A few minutes ago, she looked right at a group of middle-schoolers hanging out, smiled, and said, “Your food and drinks are coming right up!” It struck me because so many adults (including me, probably) wouldn’t do that. Not intentionally. It’s just easy to overlook kids sometimes, especially when you don’t have any of your own. But she treated them exactly the way she treats everyone else: with attention, respect, and presence. And it’s one more reason the place is always packed. Even when the tables are empty, there’s a steady stream of people, young and old, coming in for coffee and baked goods. And it reminded me of something that doesn’t get enough airtime: Presence takes energy.Seeing people takes energy. (If you’re a raging introvert, multiply that by 10.)Patience takes energy. Many of us are running on fumes and energy is in short supply. Overdoing it takes a toll and it shows up as shorter tempers, foggy thinking, reactive decisions, and the subtle inability to see the people right in front of you. You can’t honor your values or lead the way you want to lead when you’re depleted. The coffee shop owner isn’t a unicorn. She’s resourced. So as you head into the final stretch of the year, a reminder (for you and for me): Protect your energy like it matters. Because it does. You and your leadership are better when you’re not running on fumes. Shameless plug: here are a few past posts that can support you. How to identify different types of burnout and what to do about it. How small shifts can make a big impact. The importance of taking time off. A reminder of how stress impacts our emotional and physical health. Give yourself a minute to breathe. And don’t forget to enjoy the ride.
Friction Is a Leadership Choice
My team and I have been talking about what it means to be “relationship first” in the business. How can we minimize friction, make things easier for clients, and create the kind of experience people talk about and want to come back to? When you read “relationship first” did your mind immediately go to people outside of your business? If yes, you’re probably not alone. We all have internal “clients.” Colleagues. Direct reports. Managers. Stakeholders. And anyone else who relies on you to show up in a way that makes their job easier, not harder. Friction is expensive. While most of the friction we might create isn’t intentional, it does have an impact. And it’s often the small things: slow follow-ups, cryptic messages that are hard to decipher, dropping the ball, not offering enough support or context, overcomplicating something that could have been simple. 🙋🏻‍♀️ “Relationship first,” doesn’t mean being nice or endlessly accommodating. It does mean looking for opportunities to reduce drag in the system so people can do their jobs without navigating around an additional obstacle. → You. Now I say this with no judgment. I am the biggest obstacle in my own business, hands down. Which is why, at a team meeting, I wanted to talk about what it means to have a “relationship first” business. Because leadership is a series of micro-interactions and each one either creates friction… or removes it. If this all feels taxing to you, here’s a simple question you could try asking. Almost zero effort on your part. It just requires you to pause and remember to ask. “What would make this easier for you?” That question alone builds trust, shows people that you’re interested, and reminds them that you’re there to help. The external reputation of the business will always reflect the internal experience. And the same holds true for you, even if you’re internal. → If it’s frictionless inside, it shows outside. If it’s chaotic inside, it leaks outside… This isn’t a client service strategy (although it could be.) It’s a leadership strategy. Your call to action is to step back and evaluate where you might be causing friction. What could you do to reduce it?
Leadership Lesson I Learned the Hard Way
If you had a do-over in your career, what’s one thing you’d do differently? I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and the moderator asked the CHRO being interviewed this question. And of course it got me thinking… There are many things I’d do differently when it comes to managing my career. But if I had a do-over in terms of something I wish I could take back, it was that one time I delivered a performance review and didn’t do it well. The issue was that I knew going in that the employee and I were on different pages about whether or not he should get promoted. And in preparing for the discussion, I didn’t stop to consider the best way to deliver the news. Truly, it was decades ago, and I still cringe when I think about it. I can’t change what transpired, but I can change how I think about it (click here if you missed the recent post on self-compassion.) And I can change how I show up moving forward. Instead of cringing, I can have compassion for my younger self — the one who was doing the best she could with the tools she had at the time — and offer her a little grace. If I had a do-over, I’d have talked through my strategy with someone else before the meeting and changed the way I delivered the information. I’m actually grateful for how poorly I handled it and for the awareness it created. I never made that same mistake again. Which is why the Values and Identity dimensions of the Leadership Fluency™ Framework matter so much. There’s plenty of research on the role that identity and values play in leadership, but here’s how I see it: Identity is about making a conscious decision (because it is a choice!) about how we want to show up — the kind of presence, energy, and integrity we bring into the room regardless of what’s going on around us. Values are our guardrails. They drive our decisions, boundaries, and behavior when things get spicy. (And if we’re feeling crappy, there’s a good chance it’s because our values are being tested in some way.) Had I known about this way back when, I would have done things differently. Fortunately, Future Me is well informed. What’s something you wish you could do over? And what would you do differently now, knowing what you know about yourself?