Month: September 2021

Shift Your Mindset, Keep Your Focus

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night light on a bed stand

Sleep: Photo by Beazy on Unsplash

 

I think of sleep as one of my superpowers. I can typically fall asleep within a couple of minutes after climbing into bed and rarely have insomnia. Unfortunately, as I have been moving and changing jobs, my sleeping superpower has gone on hiatus, and I have been waking up several times each night and unable to go easily fall back asleep.

Because this has been happening for several weeks, I have had a chance to try many different techniques and remedies, and none of them have been particularly effective. I found that as the weeks went by, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my anxiety about not being able to go back to sleep was increasing and compounding my insomnia.

After several weeks of the same approach, I shifted my mindset. I decided that I was not going to think of this as a problem but started paying close attention to what my body was saying that it needed and doing what it was saying it needed without added internal commentary.

The first night after I decided to shift my thinking, I woke up at 1:30 am and immediately started thinking about a couple of things I needed to do, so I got up and started doing the tasks. After I completed the tasks, I felt sleepy and went back to bed and slept for a few more hours. Finally, I woke up feeling refreshed and not tired.

The next night, I woke up around 2 am and felt tired, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Every night has been different. I have started to pay attention to when I feel sleepy at night, and instead of finishing watching a show or writing an email, I stop and go to bed.

This mindset shift has been helping me get the rest I need, even if it is in a different pattern than I have in the past.

Accepting what has changed turns out to be the most effective way forward. Resistance only shifts our focus and energy to what we don’t want, making it more likely to happen. This is especially difficult to do when we lose one of our superpowers.

Honoring David

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Photo from Boston University: https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/david-jones

Grow from accidents rather than place blame

This wasn’t the first week blog I had intended to write. But that’s the thing about loss, you can’t plan for it. The emotions that come from loss mix with everything else happening in your life. So, as I embark on the next chapter of my life and career, I do so by honoring a friend whose last chapter came too soon.

I got the news of David’s fatal accident while I was shopping. My son looked on in concern as I started muttering, “no, no, no, no….” and thinking, not David and what about his wife, Sarah, and their three beautiful children. David was an incredible person and wonderful husband and father. He was so alive and vibrant and good.

David had been training for a marathon and his training run had ended in his death as a subway staircase collapsed under him. The stairway had been closed for several months because it needed repair. But David went on the stairs, and they collapsed.

When I was younger, I would have wanted to assign blame to convince myself that there were things I could do to assure that something similar didn’t happen to me. The city was to blame for not repairing the stairs sooner, someone must have removed the barrier, so David wasn’t even aware of the danger, or David didn’t think that he by himself was enough stress on the stairs, so he ignored the warning.

But the truth is that it could have just as easily been me. Accidents happen. I regularly ignore barriers on my bike and ride across bridges that are closed to traffic. Assigning blame won’t bring David back or make me feel better.

My deep sadness is for Sarah and their children. They are going to miss David so much and his loss will shape them and will be part of their journey and growth.

After the tragic death of my niece and nephew, my sister-in-law struggled for years and is now a grief coach(link is external). She wrote about her journey back to joyfully living in her book, Miracles in the Darkness: Building a Life After Loss(link is external).

I have been so sad this last week whenever I think about David and his family. The best tribute that I can think of to honor David is to try to live like he lived.

  • Love fiercely
  • Care deeply
  • Give generously
  • Live joyfully

David, you will be missed!

Passing the Torch of Positive Leadership

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A month ago, I announced I was leaving Temple after five years as VP and CIO. The outpouring of appreciation and well-wishes has been overwhelming and wonderful.  
The thing that I am most proud of during my time at Temple is the deliberate crafting of an empowered and positive work culture. This was a team effort with many people stepping up to help. 
The HR development team created and delivered the “Wiser Way” leadership training that taught common language with concrete tools to improve communication and habits. A self-nominated team developed the mission and later formed the culture committee that included me and our HR partners. A recognition committee developed the “Cheers for Peers” program. We dived into DevOps and Agile practices. We read and discussed books. We created “Wonderful Wednesdays/Whenever” to foster innovation and uninterrupted work time.
Here are a few of the comments from team members about the impact of these cultural changes.

“You’ve lit a spark and set things in a new direction. You’ve made a difference in so many ways starting with ‘seeing’ your staff and other Temple colleagues and encouraging us all to ‘see’ each other, too.” 

“I just wanted to say THANK YOU for everything!  ITS culture is more open-minded, more empathetic, technologically more forward-thinking, and it feels like our collective self-esteem is reaching upward.”  

“You’ve made a profound impact on my professional and personal life through your leadership and example of strength through vulnerability.”  

One colleague cited the book “Stewardship” by Peter Block and the value of service over self-interest. The sentiment summarizes the lasting impact that I and so many leaders in our organization desire to have.

“The book says that ‘Stewardship is to hold something in trust for another. It is the willingness to be accountable for the good of the larger organization or community of which we are a part, by being in service to, as opposed to in control of, those around us.’ I think the way you carry yourself, ‘leadership’ could directly replace ‘stewardship’ in that quote. You truly have left us in a notably better place than when you arrived on many levels that are not articulated by data and statistics. Now it’s up to us to make sure we continue the momentum and example you set. I believe that measure is the simplest yet most important aspect of successful leadership.”

I am now passing the torch of positive leadership to the Temple ITS team. Will the culture that we created together continue to thrive and improve?  I am leaving it in your capable hands.