Leadership Lost...or Never There?

2021 continues to be an eventful year - and as of the writing of this blog, we are still only sitting on January 11!  At the time of my last post we we were experiencing Aloha-gate in Alberta and had not yet gotten to the vote certification process in the U.S. Presidential election.  What a difference a week has made in the reality we are facing today!  The (top!) highlights of the past week include: the second impeachment process has begun for Donald Trump following the Capitol debacle of January 6, coupled with ever-challenging COVID-19 case counts and deaths.  We see resignations from Trump's Cabinet (rather late in the day), some Republicans jumping ship, other allies looking to distance themselves from the carnage, Trump suspended from social media platforms, and Trump world losing corporate opportunities. 

At a more local level in Alberta, the latest political polls show the governing United Conservative Party (UCP) dropping precipitously as the choice of Albertans, now sitting with a 31% approval rating as compared to the NDP at 48%.  In April 2019, the UCP won a majority government with nearly 55% of the vote in their favor.  This appears to be a direct outcome of a variety of government missteps and anxieties primarily (though not exclusively) related to handling of COVID-19.  Much like what we now see in the US, there are starting to be some cracks in unity within the UCP/conservative ranks and certainly many calls for resignations, reassignment, and consequences for government leaders and staffers who are believed to have not shown the "right stuff" or even followed government policies and directives. 

When I last posted (Leadership Lost), I talked about the fundamental sense of betrayal that so many people seemed to feel here in Alberta when government leaders and staffers seemed to go against their own directives and guidelines on managing the COVID-19 response.  Those who had adhered to restrictions, experienced loss of income/job, had to home school, or otherwise had their lives impacted were incensed.  I identified several reasons for this sense of anger and betrayal, the consequences of which for the UCP are currently reflected in the political polling noted earlier.   

One element of that anger I glossed over quite significantly, however, was a sense of foolishness that we might be experiencing during these type of perceived leadership failures.  Let me explain.  Most of us assess our leaders against our own needs and values - ill-defined as they sometimes might be.  Whether this be in politics or work or other group settings, we gravitate towards leaders whom we believe "get us" and believe in the same things we do.  The key question here is how do we make such an assessment and determine fit?  For the vast majority of us - whether in politics or business - we have limited time, access, and ability to vigorously and authentically assess and evaluate our prospective leader's values and capabilities.  And in many cases, our leadership candidates purposefully look to keep their true persona and intentions vague.  In today's social media and sound bite-driven, world we are even more challenged to go past the surface to what might be real versus staged.

We are also confounded by our unconscious filters and biases.  Contrary to what this first statement implies, filters in our minds actually serve a great purpose.  They allow us to deal with the literally thousands of pieces of data our senses take in every hour and every day.  If we had to pause for any length of time to consciously process, evaluate, and make sense of this data, we could literally be frozen into place.  An example?  I suspect very few of us who drive have to place a lot of thought into what to do when we get to an intersection or have to respond to a traffic signal.  We automatically press the brake when we see a red light, maintain or increase speed when coming to a green light, and perhaps press even harder on the gas when we see yellow.  At the same time this is happening, you are listening to the radio, a fellow passenger, or might be processing other to-do's and issues in your brain.

What does this concept of filters and unconscious bias have to do with how we pick and evaluate our leaders?  Whether we realize it or not, and whether we want to own that reality or not, we unconsciously look for qualities, characteristics, and statements that support what we already want to believe.  This is called confirmation bias. Moreover, any contrary information is not only often dismissed, it might not even register on one's radar!  We don't even see the facts when they are staring us in the face.  We see what we want to see, we dismiss what we don't, and we get highly emotional and even more entrenched when our strongly held views are challenged. 

Equating this to gambling, when presented with a losing hand (e.g., our leaders are not what we expected they would be), we often double down.  We become more committed to a cause, a leader, a direction that isn't supported by the facts or reality.  But at some point, in leadership as in gambling, we run out of chips to stay in our particular world.  "Winning", or coming back from the point of no return, is no longer possible.  The result is at least despondency if not outright anger.  If the latter, we blame everyone but ourselves for defeat.  

In reality, however, our sense of anger reflects that we are primarily angry at ourselves.  The leadership we have lost was likely never there in the first place.  It was a mirage of our own making.  We eventually realize that the leaders we came to place our faith in have not changed since we first cast our vote for them.  They are who they have always been, possessed of the same values when first elected or selected, guided by the same ambitions as they once were, and committed to the same objectives as always.  

Our anger is not so much that they fooled us into believing they understood us and cared for the same things we did, or even cared about us.  

Our anger might just be based on the fact that we fooled ourselves into seeing what wasn't there to begin with.  We have seen the enemy and it was us.

It's About Leadership.  The challenge just might be to own what we imagined and created. ______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Leadership Lost

This post comes as the world continues to navigate the scourge of COVID-19 and all of its associated impacts - economic dislocation, social isolation, fear and anxiety, uncertainty about the future, and literally a reset of almost all of what we took for granted just months ago.  What we have also come to experience is there is no common answer to the challenges we have been facing and how to get to the other side of this current reality.  Governments and leaders around the world have opted for everything from extreme lockdowns, to calls for personal responsibility, to abject denial of the significance of COVID.

This past weekend, in the transition from 2020 to 2021, Albertans came to understand a different kind of reality when it became known that multiple elected leaders and political officials ignored their own government's words, advice, and "suggestions", and were found to have travelled not just outside of their own city/town but out-of-province and out-of-country.  In some instances, these actions were further compounded by what seemed to be active attempts to deceive the electorate through social media posts. These same officials were wanting us to believe they were sending Christmas and New Year's greetings from Alberta while in reality what we were viewing were pre-recorded greetings, posted at appropriate times, while vacations continued in places like Hawaii, Mexico, and Arizona.  

Judging from my social media feed and news reports, it is clear that much of Alberta feels betrayed - in some cases profoundly so - by its leaders.  While the answer to the question why, might seem self-evident, it's important to dissect this outrage.  From my point of view, this outrage comes down to a number of factors that perhaps we all take for granted or is unsaid about what we collectively believe constitutes good leadership.  

Taking a page from Kouzes & Posner (Credibility, The Leadership Challenge), a consistent quality of leadership that followers look for is honesty.  Leadership is not (truly) achieved through simply having a position of authority or power.  It is achieved by followers being willing to follow a leader, through an evaluation that the leader(s) is someone worthy of their trust, and who shares their values and goals.  Followers must know they can trust their leaders.  A failure of honesty poisons the environment and the relationship between leader and followers.  Honesty, trust and integrity.  By failing to Model the Way (Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership), by failing to set the example and holding themselves accountable to their professed values and standards, Alberta leaders have significantly betrayed the trust of their constituents, have damaged their leadership credibility, and have diminished their legitimacy to lead through the current health and economic challenges facing this province.  

This government has only made a bad situation worse through failing to take personal and collective responsibility for actions, providing reasons why their actions were acceptable under current (unclear?) guidelines, and making half-hearted and belated apologies for their actions.  

The majority of Albertans believe they have been making significant voluntary and involuntary sacrifices for the past year.  They have lost income or entire jobs/careers, put educational/career plans on hold, become teachers for their young children, socially isolated from family and friends, cancelled vacation plans, and in many other ways put their lives on hold.  Their outrage suggests  they were operating on the belief that these sacrifices were shared by their leaders, only now to have those beliefs proven false, their faith and trust misplaced.  They not only feel betrayed, they feel they have been taken as fools for believing in the common cause.  

This is where I believe the heart of this matter lies.  What I believe accounts for the profound and widespread outrage at the moment is not just the immediate act of ignoring public health recommendations.  We feel not just betrayed but duped.  What the actions of our provincial leadership seem to demonstrate is a distinct lack of respect for their followers, for the electorate, and for fellow citizens.  We now believe we foolishly held the same values and commitments as our leaders.  By the actions of our leaders, this facade has been shattered.  The rules were only ever for us, not leadership or the inner circle.  We are not worthy.  Let us eat cake.

Where to from here?  Can trust and credibility be restored?  Will Albertans forgive and forget?  Only time will tell and, at some level, I'm sure political calculations suggest a two-year window until the next election is an eternity providing ample opportunity for resurrection.

It's About Leadership!  It always has been.  For me and I believe for most Albertans, leadership - exemplary leadership - is defined by integrity, honesty, credibility, shared pain, and shared sacrifice.  So far our provincial leadership has failed the test.  

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

 

Enabler or Gatekeeper?

When you think of HR, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Compliance officer? Gatekeeper? Controller? Or is it trusted advisor? Enabler? Business partner?

The HR profession has transformed from being a highly administrative function to being a strategic voice in business. Traditionally, HR has been perceived as a gatekeeper. Instead of managers being able to move forward with their ideas or challenges, HR was a roadblock where necessary action stopped.  There was an us vs. them mentality that pushed leaders away and forced them to circumvent processes to still get their job done.   

Gatekeeper: a  person  or  organization  that  controls

 whether  people  can have or use a  particular  service.

(www.dictionary.cambridge.org) 

When I started my career, I knew one thing for sure: my mandate was to connect with people, develop meaningful relationships, elevate the employee experience, and make things happen for the business. And through my lived experiences, I learned that a command-and-control approach with people and processes (i.e., being a gatekeeper) did not produce results. I also knew that from an HR perspective, well designed guidelines that fit the culture and values of the organization were necessary and added value to the employee experience. So, the trick was to figure out how to produce results, animate the culture and values of the organization, and nurture the employee experience by empowering them in their roles and their decision-making. 

 

The choice for me was always simple on how I would show up and perform.  To be an enabler, I had to pave the way to make things happen, influence people’s decisions with knowledge and data, and help leaders bring their ideas to life through collaboration.   

Enabler: a person or thing that makes something possible.

(www.lexico.com)

One of my greatest memories in HR was working at a land development and housing company. Working alongside the Vice President of Housing and other members of the senior leadership team, we clicked and made significant progress on the employee experience. My commitment to being an enabler was an important piece to my success in moving the business forward, as described here by the VP of Housing: 

 

“Rita is the first HR person I have worked with that gets the relationship between operations and HR. She is an enabler of people where others are gatekeepers. Rita consistently earned and built trust on the senior team through outstanding credibility, objectivity, and professionalism. She challenged experienced managers in our construction and sales culture to modernize and be open minded to the benefits of cultural change and modern people policies.” 

 

My goal was to create an open and collaborative space for leaders to feel safe, to be vulnerable, to proactively raise people issues, to evaluate options to solve problems, and to create solutions that fit the situation.   

 

My role as enabler looked like this: 

 

• Trusted advisor: earning trust, respect and credibility by being present, walking the talk, listening well, asking the right questions, and challenging thinking by bringing forward different perspectives. 
• Business knowledge: leveraging human resources knowledge and investing time to understand the business, the people, and the drivers for success. 
• Open door philosophy: having an open door for employees and leaders to discuss issues, to clarify understandings, and to be a sounding board.  My door was always open. 
• Delivering candid feedback: being comfortable with the uncomfortable, having difficult conversations, and offering honest feedback with empathy, courage, and respect. 
• Being proactive: anticipating what the business required and bringing forward valuable ideas and insight to make informed decisions about people. 
• Collaboration: great things happen when people work together.  Collaboration is one of my values and it is how I partner with the business to improve people decisions. 

 

How can leaders support HR to be an enabler to the business?    

 

• Be accountable to themselves, their teams and the organization. 
• Communicate often. Leaders are a pathway to raise awareness, share knowledge and keep employees informed.   
• Leverage human resources. HR is on your team and they want you to succeed!   
• Be open, transparent and honest. Share information often and speak up if you cannot meet a company deadline.  
• When in doubt, ask for HR’s help before a small people problem becomes a big people problem.   
• Put employees first. HR is supportive when they know leaders have done everything in their power to work with their employees and position them to succeed.   
• Get social and take a break with your HR partner.  We are human too! Go for coffee. Create space for HR to get to know you, your pain points, what keeps you up at night.  Developing trusting relationships is hard work but well worth it when you want to accomplish great things together.  Trust me, this is a cool thing to do! 

 

HR is no longer an administrative function, but an enabling voice to organizations. And as the future of work evolves, HR will continue to be a center of influence and a strategic voice to organizations. 

 

HR is in a unique position to influence business and people decisions and offer valuable insight. It can connect the dots between people, data, and business, giving organizations a competitive advantage.  Organizations that enable HR will improve business performance. 

As human beings, we are wired for social connection. This is a year where that wiring has been tested in every aspect of our lives. As I write this blog, it is the last month of 2020, and a time to reflect on what this year has taught us about where we show up as gatekeepers and where we show up as enablers. How have those occurrences impacted your ability and capacity to experience connection? 

 

I believe it is in each one of us to be an enabler.  Human beings have the ability to be open minded, to collaborate, to be vulnerable, to empower others, to be empathetic, to communicate often, to be active listeners, to show up with no judgement, and to accept different perspectives.  Imagine the possibilities if the enabler lens was expanded from the HR function in a business and applied to a vision for humanity and the world.  Just imagine! 

Driven by connection,

Rita Filice

______________________________

Rita Filice, BCOMM, CPHR

Partner, BreakPoint Solutions

ritaf@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2544

Rita thrives on connecting people, leveraging human resources and delivering performance.  She is a collaborative and accomplished HR leader who values authentic connection, meaningful conversation, and her positive energy and outlook make anything possible.

Moral Distress, Residue and the Price of Leadership

Today - November 25, 2020.  As I write this, Alberta is coming off successive days of over 1,000 COVID cases and ICU capacity is reaching pre-determined threshold limits in the province.  We have the dubious distinction of leading the country.  For days, weeks, and even months, our provincial government has been admonishing citizens to exercise personal responsibility in how they work, play, live, and socialize in order to flatten the COVID curve.  

The current conservative government has been loathe to impose (and enforce?) more significant restrictions up to and including a circuit-breaker lockdown of between two to four weeks long.  This would harken back to earlier this year when businesses were shuttered and schools either effectively closed or moved to virtual reality through to the end of June.  Similar efforts have been used to positive affect in other jurisdictions like Australia.

In April, daily cases reported numbers in the low hundreds.  Today we are multiples beyond that and likely to hit new highs in the coming days. The Grinch is likely to steal Christmas this year. 

The current choice provincial political leadership seems to believe it is faced with is one between economic disaster that would arise from a lockdown, the potential backlash from some who believe any form of restrictions is a violation of their individual rights, and a continuing - and accelerated - rate of infection, hospitalization, and death of Albertans. Livelihoods or lives.

Leadership is about hard choices.  Compounding that reality is that those hard choices are fraught with imperfect information, particularly around decisions where there are conflicting opinions, motivations, and truly unknown future outcomes.  Leaders rarely get clear and distinct choices between right and wrong, yes or no, black and white.  Leadership is about the courage to function and excel in the shades of gray. 

Those choices can result in pain and anguish when we struggle through what is the right thing to do or we may even be actively prevented from doing the right thing.  There may also be times where we feel we are forced to do the wrong thing.  We experience moral distress.  I can only imagine the moral distress that our Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) faces each day as she watches the cases climb, contact tracing systems collapse under the volume of activity, citizens ignoring recommendations to promote their safety, and having to toe a political line relative to what should be done versus what will be allowed or tolerated.  

Beyond the period of agonizing over that first big choice comes the consequence of having to now live with those choices.  Moral residue follows moral distress - a feeling of having compromised ourselves, our ethics, our values, and ourselves when the anticipated and real consequences of our choices come home to roost.  I believe the CMOH is trying to do the right thing.  The question becomes is she being prevented from doing the right thing or is she even being forced to do the wrong thing.

The answers to whether our government is doing the right thing or the wrong thing will become much more abundantly clear in the next two to three weeks.  In that time we will find out how much of a game of Russian roulette we have been playing.  We will find out how many blanks or live ammo are in our collective gun.  If we have guessed, hoped, or chosen wrong, we will put our healthcare system in another situation of moral distress. In fact, we already have.  Elective and non-urgent surgeries have already been cancelled.  Other appointments and diagnostic tests have been delayed or postponed.  These consequences will pale in comparison to the choices we may be placing before our healthcare professionals in the weeks to come.  We could be asking them to NOT put COVID patients on ventilators because we lack capacity.  We may be asking them to CHOOSE between providing life-saving care for a 55-year-old father of three daughters, or the 80-year-old grandmother of six grandkids, or the 30-year-old just-married wife starting to really launch her career.

Moral distress.  Moral residue.  It's being writ large for all of us.  Send our kids to school or not.  Work from home or not.  See our families or not.  Support a lockdown or not.  

This is the time for strong leadership.  This is a time for courage.  This is a time of commitment.

It's About Leadership.  Period.

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Exorcising our Ghosts

Growing up I had my fair share of fears as I suspect most kids do.  In particular, I somehow learned to fear the dark and more particularly all the evil creatures that might be lurking under the bed, in my closet or just outside the window.  Every noise and small movement of shadow seemed to be amplified, the precursor to my impending doom.  Several decades removed from those childish fears I still find myself somewhat anxious at the thought of a night out with my telescope observing the heavens.

The reality is, however, that in my youth those monsters were quite real.  And in truth, it was only over time and not through any particular parental logic that they were overcome.  I profess to still having some fear of the dark, but more often it is borne out of knowledge of what is really out there - farm dogs that might perceive me as a threat; skunks, coyotes or other wild animals; and other humans who might have less astronomical things on their minds.  My fears are more grounded in reality these days (e.g., COVID impacts, US election results??), but they don't hold me back from pursuing one of my personal passions.  So what gets me out there in the middle of the night regardless of perceived or real ghosts?  In this case, it is the opportunity to gaze upon celestial wonders of far flung galaxies, nebulae, and the rings of Saturn. In some bizarre and metaphorical sense, I am driven to face my fears by a higher purpose.  

As an executive coach - and a leader/entrepreneur in my own right - I experience and realize that I can be subject to a number of different fears.  Most of these come down to self-doubt and the courage to take on new and different challenges in my career and business.  And I see similar behavior in many of the clients I work with.  The mythical monsters that have lived in the closets or just outside our windows in our youth now stalk the halls and alleys of our hearts, minds and souls.  These monsters and ghosts are some of the most insidious we will ever face.  They know us well and play on and magnify our weaknesses, insecurities, and doubts.  Left unfaced, they grow in strength and hold us paralyzed with fear striving to ensure we never take that next step forward.

These ghosts don't operate purely or even mostly on horror and shock value.  Rather, they are more cunning and possessed of a powerful voice, constantly talking us out of taking that next bold step into the future.  They are the voice that suggests we really aren't qualified to apply for a new position.  They help us procrastinate and rationalize to the point where even if we were to apply and get an interview we would show up with the belief we don't belong.  We display our anxiety to the point that those who would make the selection decision recognize our lack of confidence and make the non-selection decision we have been expecting all along.  We become our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

But like conquering our own childhood fears, success in facing our more mature fears is possible.  My success and the successes of my coaching clients are proof of that.  In my first year away from an executive role and into my new venture, I probably had more sleepless nights - and self-talk - than I'd had in the previous 10 years.  What made this the right move?  Was my business plan just wishful thinking?  What made me think that my marketing efforts were the right ones? And so on and so forth.  I could say it was the powerful vision of my ultimate success that kept me going, but that would be too easy a way to rewrite history.  Truth be told, I was probably just too proud and stubborn to give in.  But I did ultimately face and conquer (most of) my fears.  I often did so with the encouragement, support, inspiration, and examples of others.

In similar fashion, I have been inspired by the courage that many of my coaching clients have ultimately demonstrated as they struggled with realizing their potential, seeking out new opportunities, and taking on new challenges.  We have helped them face their fears, challenge their self-limiting beliefs and powerfully own their strengths.  A quote from one of my coaching colleagues comes to mind in this regard: "Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood to go into alone."  So together, we have walked the dark halls and alleys of their mind, challenging assumptions, taking small steps, all in service of a grander vision of what is possible for them, to realize their potential and open up new vistas they had not even imagined.

The fears and doubts never truly go away.  I still fear the dark, I still fear swimming in open water, and I still fear that success enjoyed today is fleeting.  Even as my clients enjoy their current success (e.g., new job, award, raise, promotion), they still wonder how they will maintain or build on that success.  Our fears and doubts won't go quietly into the night, but perhaps rather than paralyzing us, they can serve a more useful function of keeping us sharp and helping us prepare for potential (and reality-based) setbacks. 

Keeping a higher purpose and vision in front of us - the celestial heavens, the triathlon finish line, a successful and fulfilling career - is a foundation by which we can keep moving one step ahead, developing our own level of reassurance that our fears are often overblown.  We can choose to live in fear or live in purpose.  We can look back on our past successes as harbingers of bigger things to come.  We can believe in our strengths and in our capacity to become stronger.  We can ultimately build the confidence and courage to overcome what is holding us back from our un-imagined potential.

Choose to face your ghosts, get off your (metaphorical) bed, and shine a flashlight into the dark spaces.  What you don't find there might amaze you and lighten your load.

Exorcise your ghosts - own the night.

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Understanding Your PLC

We are now full on into our seventh month (October 2020) of leading life in and through a COVID-19 reality.  If you are like me, this has meant juggling as a leader, business, and family like never before.  What I know and have experienced, and what my clients have expressed to me, is that everything we do seems like it requires a great deal more intentionality than ever before.  Nothing just happens as a matter of course.  And that means we are expending more effort and energy than ever before.  It is testing our PLC - Personal Leadership Capacity.

This post comes courtesy of the intersection of a number of parallel but distinct events and experiences over the past week.  Often times as individual leaders and organizations we feel overwhelmed by the opportunities and challenges before us.  This reality hit me particularly hard this week - in more ways than one.  I heard flavors of it from a couple of my coaching clients, in individual coaching and group planning sessions I facilitated, and from my own personal and business perspective.

From several of my coaching clients this week I heard the lament of too much on my plate, how do I get this all done, how do I prioritize and/or how do I get others to appreciate that my plate is already full.  If we flip the coin on this lament we can hear some other common themes that are all too often a part of our work these days - stress and fatigue on the part of our colleagues and staff, even complete absence or disconnection at times, and points of conflict that seem to come out of nowhere or on issues that seem relatively minor.  Sometimes these results are being borne out because of or in parallel to the perception or reality of lack of resources.  "How do we keep going with this remote working reality?  How do I juggle this home office with my kids doing their school work (or not) at that same I'm trying to manage this meeting?  Where do I find the time - or the commitment from others - to deliver on our plans?" The examples and the list go on and on.  Time, energy, and money - and more - don't seem to be on our side more than ever these days.  

Just as challenging it would seem for some leaders or organizations is the willingness to say no or to otherwise prioritize the requests and workloads coming at them.  This is further compounded by the fact that our boundaries between work and home are incredibly blurred, if they even exist at all right now.  In some of these cases, as described by my clients, there appears to be an organizational willingness and imperative to say "yes" to everything that comes across the table.  If we don't say YES, perhaps that is THE decision that puts us over the brink into irrelevance!  Conversely, it may be that there is an organizational unwillingness to say "no" to anything that comes across the table.  This predicament is probably enhanced in the kind of reality that we are experiencing right now.  Saying no to a request might be perceived as tantamount to asking for your own termination notice.  Unfortunately, too many organizations have not been willing to truly establish the key guideposts by which they would evaluate any initiative that comes before them.  The result is predictable - yes is the answer to every initiative regardless of current workload or resources.  The long-term sustainability of such a response is hardly considered.  Just don't say no now.

Therefore, for me, it was refreshing to recently hear a CEO of a large organization espouse to his executive team and governing board the need to understand - and respect - their personal and organizational capacities.  Rather than demand more and more - as is the wont of many hard-driving executives - he was holding the feet of his people to a different fire.  Understand your capacity.  Understand that there are limits to the time available to you in a day, week, and month.  Understand that there are limits to your ability to handle multiple priorities.  Understand that there are limits to your energy reserves. Don't tell me you are going to add another initiative to your plate and keep to every other milestone you have already set.  Chose wisely and execute well.  It was a powerful message and one that clearly was being understood and accepted, even if slowly, over time.

The message of this forward-thinking CEO, an individual that I would no way characterize as soft, stands in sharp contrast to others I have experienced or worked with during this time. One of the most iconic examples is of a CEO who tried to alter his staff's perspective on prioritization by use of the somewhat infamous "Big Rocks in the Bucket First" exercise.  A decent enough exercise, but it presumes that all managers and staff have the ability - or are allowed - to pick their own big rocks.  In the case of the forward-thinking CEO already noted, this appeared to be the case (outside of regulated or legislated initiatives).  But for other leaders, who most often define what the big rocks are, there is a lack of appreciation of how many big rocks can be rolled down the hill or the potential consequences of ignoring some of the little rocks that others in the organization need to work with.

In fact, perhaps it's time to update the Big Rocks exercise, particularly now.  Perhaps there has to be an understanding of what size of bucket we are actually working with.  What's our actual Personal Leadership Capacity?  Perhaps as leaders we need to undertake a bit more of an internal environmental scan before launching the next big rock down the hill and understand how that fits with - or displaces - other rocks we launched yesterday or the week before.

The final hitting home point for me on capacity has come on my own business and personal side.  The past month has been one of the busiest and most challenging for me on a number of fronts. Altered reality has been challenging my capacity and, more particularly, made me feel that I have been less of the quality family man and coach than I should be and aspire to be.   Others - most notably my wife - are also in that same boat.  Our stress levels are up.  Our capacity is down.  While potentially manageable in the short-term, the stress tolerances of continually exceeding one's capacity has inevitable and predictable consequences.

The lesson of capacity is one that I'm trying to learn (or learn again) in my personal and business life and I trust that you can be more forward-thinking, insightful and discerning as you contemplate launching your next big rock into your leadership or organizational bucket.
_________________________________________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC

President & Founder - BreakPoint Solutions

gregh@breakpoint.solutions 

www.breakpoint.solutions 

780-250-2543

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.