Month: June 2022

Examining Trust

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One of my favorite parts of my morning walks is listening to podcasts. I get to learn while I get my endorphins.  I listened for a second time this morning to a Brené Brown conversation with Charles Feltman, the author of The Thin Book of Trust.

Lack of trust has been an area of concern in our annual Voice of the Employee survey, and it has been highlighted to me in many conversations in the last few weeks, so I have been thinking a lot about how to be better at building trust.

The definition of trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s action” is at the core of why this is so important and difficult. It is also complicated by the fact that trust is multi-layered.

  • Do I trust that you have my interests at heart in addition to your own?
  • Do I trust that you are being honest?
  • Do I trust you to do what you commit to doing?
  • Do I trust your competence?
  • Do I trust that you can keep a confidence?

In Brown’s conversation with Feltman, there was a marvelous exchange about whether you could trust someone in some areas and not others and both agreed that it is both possible and critical to do that.

I am still processing what I learned, but my key personal takeaway from the podcast was that it is often the lack of clear commitments and boundaries that create the foundation of distrust. I need to work on that!

I would love to hear what you learned from this podcast or about how to think about trust.

Supporting Others as They Step Away

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Woman Stretching

Last week, I took a day off from work. There were many things that happened including rolling power outages and cancelled meetings that left my calendar uncharacteristically open. I realized as I put my out of office message up that it was the first day in months that I had stepped away from the “office.”

I put “office” in quotes because the shift to remote work has erased the boundaries between our personal and work lives. Unless we choose to go to the secluded backwoods where there is no cellular service, we literally can be connected from anywhere in the world and keep working.

More than ever, we must make a conscious choice to take a break and step away from our work and to support our teams and colleagues as they do the same.

There were two examples from last week that allowed me to step away:

I was asked to provide some key information for leadership that required someone who was on vacation. After talking with my boss, we chose to delay a meeting rather than disturbing that person on their vacation.

On my day off, I got some news that I needed to deal with. After calling one of my team members to share the news, he told me that he was going to send me some information but extracted a promise from me to not look at it until I got back to work and to enjoy my day off.

These are small examples but made a huge difference in allowing me to unplug and reminded me of how important it is to support each other in stepping away from work.

How do you support your colleagues when they take a break?

I Get To

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Last week, my leadership team joined the IT leadership team from the Wexner Medical Center to participate in the “Health Athlete” training program from the Ohio State School of Nursing. This is a program that was co-developed by Jim Loehr, whose work I have loved for many years and so I was very excited to attend the training.

The training was very focused on self-work and understanding our own values, habits and stories that drive energy. The goal at the end of the training was to find one small change that we could commit to in the next 90 days that would help us live more fully into our own values and priorities.

One of the sessions was very emotional for me as I uncovered a ton of negative stories that had been draining my energy and optimism. Making that visible to myself in a supportive and safe setting was both informative and empowering.

My “ah-ha” moment during the training was when the instructor talked about reframing the boatload of work that she had from “I have to…” to “I get to…” I realized that over the last several months, my perspective had changed from one of excitement and opportunity to one based on obligation and overwhelm.

My small change that I have committed to for the next 90 days is to use that reframe from “I have to” to “I get to.” My commitment to make that small change is helping me recognize how often I had been mentally shifting to “I have to” in all aspects of my life.

Just one example is that I have a goal to ride as many miles as I am years old on my birthday each year. Even though I love to cycle, I realized that I was NOT very excited when I thought about doing that this year because I was thinking of it as an obligation.

I did that ride last Saturday with so much joy! I got to ride 56 miles this year because I had the health, equipment, time and friends to do that ride with me.

What mental reframes have you found to be empowering and energizing in your life?

Finding The Right Tool

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Image of tools hanging on a wall

I love tools and am constantly looking for resources that help me do things more efficiently in every part of my life. My husband teases me that I have used the chop saw I bought him as a gift more than he has. At work, my quest has been for tools to help me manage change. This ultimately led me to tools that helped me grow as a leader because I learned that WHO I AM is my most powerful organizational change tool.

I believe that all of us are leaders if we choose to be. At a minimum, we are the leaders of our own lives. You choose to be a leader when you step up to improve the world around you.

I am just starting to dig into a tool that I am really excited about because I have found that in my new role, I don’t have the right tool right now for the level of complexity and ambiguity. The tool is a book called Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization by Kegan  and Lahey. The adult development model described in the book has already helped me. I am planning on doing all the exercises in the book for my own development and growth.

 

Here is the short list of other tools and why they have been so instrumental in my own leadership journey.

What tools have you found to be helpful in your leadership journey?