As we kick of a new year and a new decade, many of us gear up for personal and professional improvement. In order to improve something in your life a typical approach is to make time for a new practice. You have to add time to make it happen. If you want to lose weight, you start going to the gym. To make more money, you increase the amount of work. To be more present, you wake up earlier and meditate. But if you are a leader in any capacity your life is already full of things to do. For the perpetually busy, what could be more stressful than adding yet one more task?
An alternative approach would be to subtract. If you want to lose weight, eat less. If you want more money, spend less. If you want to be happier see what Bob Newhart says in this SNL skit. (If only it were that easy.)
But what if there’s another option; something neither additive nor deductive. Rather than starting something new, or stopping something old just shift what you’re already doing.
You already have to breathe, eat, drink and transport yourself from one place to another. You already attend meetings and have 1-1 conversations. How can you make the most of these moments? Here are a few examples of what our clients have done:
A seasoned VP felt constantly edgy and combative with the less experienced co-founders of his startup. A shift in his morning commute made all the difference. Instead of a news packed radio hour full of the latest shootings and world problems he listened to his favorite up-beat music. The music made him smile and he naturally felt more at ease and happy when he entered the office each day. He was less tense right out of the gate and therefore more open to their fresh ideas and perspectives.
For an engineer who wanted to speak more clearly and succinctly it wasn’t as simple as stopping his habit of speaking fast or rambling. For him, the shift was in posture, from slouching to standing straight instead. First, this unraveled patterns of tension and anxiety in his body. Second, it signaled to his brain that he didn’t need to be casual, slouchy or buddy-buddy with his co-workers. He needed to stand comfortably tall and in alignment. He practiced improving his posture daily during regular meetings. Nothing changed in his schedule, he just used meeting time more productively by practicing posture while listening and engaging. This micro shift practiced repeatedly over time led him to a game-changing conversation with a top level exec. He calmly and succinctly shared his idea and his skip-level superior quickly adopted it and rolled it out to the rest of the organization.
A new partner in a firm wanted to increase engagement with her team. When a move from the city to the suburbs increased her commute time she used her drive time as a valuable time to shift gears, connect, and have important conversations with her directs. She learned things about them and issues for the company as a whole that she would have missed had she not invested the time in connecting with them.
But wait, this sounds too simple. In Legacy, James Kerr tells the story about the famous All Blacks rugby team famous for their haka - a mighty ritual they use at the start of a match. According to Kerr such shifts are game changing. The All Blacks take their shifts to a new level by making them rituals. “You must ritualize to actualize.”
Step back…consider the flow and pattern of your day. Where could you simplify, slow down and be more deliberate? What small shift in effort will generate maximum return for you? What purpose are you trying to fulfill right now and what’s the easiest way to integrate that purpose into things you are already doing? This is where rubber hits the road. Cultivate habits that are uniquely powerful for you based on your specific purpose and your daily patterns. Then chart a path that starts where you are.
