The question assumes you were once there – wherever there may be.  I’m a hockey fan. Through the years I’ve watched countless NHL players battle injuries to get back into the lineup. Each year after one team lifts the Stanley Cup you then hear about all the off-season surgeries. Players sometimes play in every game of a playoff run with injuries that would prevent many of us from reporting to a desk job. Surgery is followed by extensive physical therapy to regain the strength necessary to be a successful professional athlete.  Physically, I clearly can’t relate. Relating to being a professional athlete is impossible for me. 😉 However, I can relate to getting back to something. I’ve had a few orthopedic surgeries (all upper body, as they’d say in hockey). Shoulders. Elbows. The physical therapy we ordinary humans endure can be hard. Doable, but difficult. I can’t imagine the rigors of being a professional athlete trying to fight his way onto an NHL roster.  But there are mental and emotional states, too. Getting back to an improved place – a state that you once experienced, but somehow lost – can be much harder than any physical challenge. Talent and skill won’t exclusively serve you to get unstuck, to grow, to improve, or to find your way back. Experience won’t either. It requires something more. But what? That’s for you to figure out. And finding your way back…which might more appropriately be, the way forward…can look different for each of us, and our specific circumstances.  It was years ago, but it doesn’t seem so long ago. I’m in a locker room with a team I loved – the truth is, I’ve loved all the teams I’ve ever coached, but this team was different. Special. A bunch of college guys playing roller hockey for the University of Texas at Arlington. We’ve been together for four years. Experienced far more success than failure. But at an annual national championship tournament, a tourney we’ve qualified for each year, we come up against teams who are simply better than we are. Our talent is excellent, but just not quite enough to be elite. Reality stings when it hits you in the face as defeat.  Sports psychology dates back to at least the 1920s (some date it back to the late 1800s). It wasn’t until the late 1970s that sports psychology began to morph into a professional science-based practice. In 1974 W. Timothy Gallwey, one-time captain of the Harvard tennis team published The Inner Game of Tennis. The book was an outgrowth of Gallwey’s experience learning about meditation and how it helped him concentrate more on his tennis performances. For many of us in the mainstream, it was our introduction to sports psychology. Sports psychology is a proficiency that uses psychological knowledge and skills to address optimal performance and well-being of athletes, developmental and social aspects of sports participation, and systemic issues associated with sports settings and organizations. In short, it’s the art and science of helping athletes figure out how to move forward to improve their performance.  That’s exactly what executive coaching is all about, too. Helping executives figure out how to move forward to improve their performance. Sometimes it’s helping an executive figure out how to forge new paths forwards, but other times it’s about helping a seasoned executive figure out how to get back to a prior level of high performance! It’s all the same – to help improve existing performance to something higher and better!  There are a few things that can help us find our way back – or forward – to improved performance. One, we have to face ourselves,

It doesn’t’ happen often. In fact, I’ve gone on record that in all my years of serving leaders I’ve only encountered one client who was utterly disagreeable to be helped. But that doesn’t mean all of us don’t encounter times – perhaps just moments – where we’re resistant to asking for, or accepting help even though we know we could use it.  Why? Let me give you the 2 biggest reasons I’ve discovered in helping people. Pride. Leaders and executives have pride. Not necessarily the harmful kind – arrogance and hubris. Mostly, good leaders have pride in themselves, their accomplishments, and their future prospects. Great leaders have pride in their teams and organizations.  The downside is that this positive pride can make us resistant to vulnerability. The whole “never let ’em see you sweat” mindset that we so often need works against us in these moments where we could likely experience some significant growth. We’re not accustomed to turning it ON and OFF, so turning our pride down enough to see the safety that can exist with somebody who can help us…it’s difficult. It requires a firm commitment to our own growth and improvement. Only when our growth matters more than our pride will we likely submit ourselves to the vulnerability necessary for the task of personal and professional growth. Lack of safety. More than any single thing I’ve had clients tell me of all the times they sought or would have accepted help, but the right person never showed up. Those who did show up weren’t safe enough for them to fully open up. Mostly, clients report a boss who attempted to coach them and they simply felt it was a no-win situation for them. I know much is written about how we must coach our employees at work. And I agree. But there is a specific kind of coaching that very few bosses can successfully pull off – the kind that is personal enough to really move the needle. You could survey every client I’ve ever served and I guarantee 100% of them (save one 😉 ) would readily tell you that their biggest breakthroughs happened when they were most vulnerable. Not when they were least vulnerable. But they’d also tell you that they felt completely safe with me. It’s the advantage of professional coaches who have no other dog in the hunt other than helping the client excel. I don’t bring any baggage to the relationship. There’s nothing the client owes me, other than their best effort to their own growth and improvement. And they basically don’t owe me that, but they owe that to themselves!  So what can we do if we’re determined to grow and improve?  One, make up your mind. Your determination to improve is the most important ingredient. Nothing can replace it. Until you fully commit yourself to your own growth and improved success, nothing else matters. Tactics. Strategies. Collaboration. None of it will make any difference until you are fully vested in your future potential being realized.  Two, jettison excuses. Accept responsibility. Second, only to the first is this one – to get rid of all the blaming and excuse-making. Included in this is to get rid of living in the past.  Sometimes we can make up our mind that we’d like to improve, but we’re cursed with some lingering issues of being victims. It’s so easy to do. To relive all the woes of our past and find excuses why we played no part in it. Even easier is to never forget all the injustices or ill-treatment we endured. It helps us explain some of our current challenges. We’re the way we are because back years ago we had to endure certain things. That becomes our excuse for why we’re still engaged in some behaviors that may not be serving us so well.  My coaching is intently focused on helping clients paint them...

Every night while sitting in the front of the TV I’d open a large accordion file where I kept manufacturers’ literature on high-fidelity stereo gear. The file was alphabetized with a slot for every letter. Advent speaker literature went into the A. Thorens turntables into the T slot. I started this habit while in junior high because I loved music and the gear used to play my favorite records. All this cool equipment was far beyond my means, but nightly I’d look at all the features and specs and dream. I’d visit stereo stores as often as possible to hear systems I could only dream about owning. Glorious! That’s what it was to sit down in a listening room to hear a record the way it should be heard. Full fidelity. I’d leave each store with whatever new product literature was missing from my growing collection.  A passion for music and stereo gear propelled me to walk into a stereo store when I was 16. No selling experience. No real work experience except manual labor for my dad’s business, home construction. Stepping and fetching mostly and cleaning completed construction. Not exactly the kind of work that would make your heart rate increase, except due to exhaustion.  Somehow I wound up in front of the owner of this stereo store – a store with four sound rooms, each armed with those 70s fixtures, sliding glass patio doors. Sitting in his office he began to grill me about products, including products his store didn’t carry. I quickly was able to answer all his questions, including the only one I still remember. “What do the model numbers of Marantz receivers represent?” No problem. I knew the answer, “Their wattage per channel.” He hired me right there. My first real job working for a small business owner. Straight commission. I was hooked. In 2007 I formally began to serve small business owners. Years of being in the trenches of working to achieve the trifecta of business building compelled me to serve “my people.” People with whom I have more in common than probably any other segment of business people. Small business is close to my heart. Admittedly, I’m biased heavily in favor of the entrepreneur working hard to make a difference in their part of the world.  In 1984 I was 27 years old. I was a couple of years into my first #1 leadership role running a business with $14M in annual revenue. The trifecta of business building became a reality sitting in my office one morning battling the issues of the day. As I pondered a variety of challenges that day I had a rare epiphany, all my challenges in running a small business could be distilled into three categories – the three things that were most important in operating a successful enterprise. Getting new customers Serving existing customers better Not going crazy in the process   Nothing else mattered. I began to think of my business that way. Every action fits into one or more of the categories. From purchasing to merchandising, to cash flow management, to profit margins, to personnel, to operational efficiencies…you name it, I could instantly make it fit.  Over the years as I encountered other operators of small businesses I learned that we shared similar frustrations and challenges. But I also learned that if I was going to achieve stellar results – I was never satisfied with being good…I wanted to be remarkable – I’d have to do something others weren’t doing. Perhaps I’d have to avoid doing what others were doing. Sometimes you have to be like Captain Kirk of Star Trek and go where nobody has gone before. Besides, it’s fun! Helping small business owners is a passion. Coaching city government leaders is also a passion. These days, they’re more congruent than you may think because they’re both about high impact influence.

Now that the 30-Day Micro Leadership Course is complete I’m going to keep my word and step away for a bit. As I prepare to shut things down for a while I’ve been thinking about rest, rejuvenation, revival, recreation, and all the various things we can do to help ourselves improve. Last week I was talking with a couple of people about the things they do to catch their breath. We’re all pretty driven people and all of us are experienced, mature leaders (that means we’re all in our late 50s or early 60s). 😉 “What’s the longest you’ve ever stepped away?” I asked. There was a lot of mental calculating going on as we all tried to remember our various vacations and time away from the daily workload. Nobody answered so I asked, “Have either of you taken off 2 weeks straight…or more?” The answer to that came almost instantly. From both of them. “No, never!” “Me neither,” I answered.  Then for the next few minutes, the conversation was solely about why taking extended time away is a bad idea. I pushed back, even though I had no clue what I was really talking about because I’ve never taken more than one week off. Even so, I wasn’t sold on their logic that the cost of coming back was so high. I questioned if they had mental blocks about being gone, fearful they might not be missed. Or worse, fearful things might go even better in their absence. They chuckled and claimed that would be wonderful if that were the case.  Well, that was too much of a lob pitch for me. I had to swing for the fences and asked us to all talk about what it might take in order to make sure our absences improved things while we were gone. I don’t manage a team these days, but I’ve spent my career doing it so we constructed scenarios of what we might need to do to prepare for such a reality.  What about you? What do you do for rest and rejuvenation?  Do you find yourself not wanting to step away for fear of “fill-in-the-blank?” It’s worth wrestling to the ground so you can figure it out. But today, think about how stepping away can improve things for you. And your leadership.  Sometimes it’s not about doing nothing. It’s not necessarily about playing either. It could just be about a change of scenery.  This past Sunday afternoon I was watching Dallas’ own Matthew Stafford soundly defeat Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay team. While the skill surrounding Stafford is substantially different, the change of leaving a basement-dwelling NFL team like Detroit for the sunny outlook of a talented Los Angeles Chargers’ team has clearly given Stafford new life. The TV crew commented how Stafford, in spite of years of NFL experience, has never been in a game of such magnitude as playing against the defending Super Bowl champions and Tom Brady. It may be that your career is stuck because you’re struggling with a losing culture, or teammates who lack the competence to excel. I’m optimistic, but I’m not crazy. Not everybody can be or do anything they put their mind to. I know their moms all told them that was true, but moms can be too nice! 😉 Henry is a supervisor for a small manufacturing company. He’s been there almost 5 years and confesses he’s hated almost every moment of it. When I ask why he stays, he says because he’s long thought he could influence the outcome, but now he’s pretty convinced it’s a losing effort. The details are heartbreaking. Here’s a highly motivated manager who described years of building a team he has supreme faith in. They’ve proven their effectiveness and efficiency in spite of upper management’s ineptness. I ask, “Is your team the reason you stay?” “Absolutely,” he admits. These people are doing great work and Henry used to be con...

Session 30. We’re completing this short 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. My goal when we began was to provoke thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Mostly, I wanted to help you challenge yourself and your enterprise to higher human performance! My role isn’t to tell you what to do, or how to do it. My role is to help you figure it out. I want to help you see more clearly and take positive actions that will move you forward. Always forward! So with that, let’s wrap up our 30 days together in this course. No, it’s not the end of this podcast. It’s just the end of this 30-day series. I’ll be taking a break after today so don’t panic if you don’t hear from me for a week or two. That’ll give you an opportunity to catch up and perhaps go back to review episodes of this course that most resonated with you – or the ones that you felt might be most needed.  Pursuing The Ideal Outcome This is the objective of all this work. We’ve mostly learned how beneficial it is, to begin with the end in view. Everybody says it and claims to practice it, but in my experience, very few people put in the work to detail it out. When pressed, people find it challenging to articulate or specify in writing their ideal outcome.  Put in the work. Sit down and write down your ideal outcome. Your leadership will never exceed your willingness, courage, and dedication to improve. Be detailed and specific. You’re not etching it in stone. Ideal outcomes are always subject to change because life happens. Our circumstances and situations change. People come and go in our life. Relationships change. Some grow. Others diminish. Many factors impact our ideal outcome so give yourself permission to go with it and change it as needed. This is your life and your career. Take control of it. Remember, you’re writing a hero story, not a victim story. Construct your ideal outcome accordingly.  It’s The People Who Matter! Leadership has an obvious point. It’s relationships with people. I’ve been beating the drum of leadership being all about influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves. The beneficiary of each of these activities is OTHERS. But more precisely, it’s about your ability to relate well to others.  High-performing enterprises behave differently. They’re willing to do what others aren’t. They behave differently because they think and believe differently. Those thoughts and beliefs drive them to act differently. And it impacts all the relationships. Vendors, suppliers, strategic partners, employees, leaders, management, customers – all these relationships are superior in high-performing organizations. That makes an enormous difference in the outcomes.  Part of relationship building is mutual benefit. One-sided relationships aren’t tolerated in high-performance cultures. That is, a person unwilling or unable to contribute isn’t tolerated. Suppliers unwilling to meet the expectations aren’t either. Up and down and throughout the operation, relationships must be beneficial, not detrimental.  There is a relentless pursuit of the ideal outcome coupled with compassion where judgment is focused on the honest pursuit of the ideal outcome. That doesn’t mean everybody is perfect. Mistakes will be made. Errors will happen. But in the context of learning, growing and trying things. Innovation will always be fraught with imperfection as we pursue perfection. The relationships are forged in willingness, intention, and wisdom. Relationships are damaged by unwillingness, selfishness and foolishness.  From employees to customers and every relationship in between, high-performing organizations raise the bar over which everybody must jump. Expectations are highest in excellent organizations. 

Session 29 in our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. Let’s keep the ideas flowing about being excellent – not just in our leadership but for our team, group, or organization. Let’s talk about it context of connection, collaboration, and communication. These three C’s are crucial for high-performance and your leadership.  By now you’ve figured out how to improve the psychological safety in your organization. Without it, there’ll be no good connection. And collaboration and communication will both suffer. These are important factors in measuring performance and whether or not people see it as a “gotcha” tactic versus a scorecard where success can be celebrated.  Connect with your people individually if possible (as I said in an earlier session, think about your direct reports and expand it out beyond that if you can). Sit down and learn about their career goals, their life goals, and what they most want. Find points of congruency between the organization’s needs and their goals. Help them reach their goals and lead them (influence them and do for them what they can’t do for themselves). This is a perfect opportunity to collaborate with them on how they can better know if they’re on track toward what they most want to achieve. Communicate what you’re going to help them do to better measure their own success, so like me at the gym – they’ll know if they’re getting stronger.  Connect with your people collectively for the same purpose. Ask them for their input. Challenge them to come up with measurements that will help each group, or team and the whole organization know the progress you’re all making together. Make it exciting, fun and challenging.  We’re living in a society full of gamification. High-performing cultures gamify the quantifiable measurements to drive the competitive urges we all have to achieve more. My son has three kids ages 10, 8, and 6. When they were younger getting them to eat better was a challenge. Like most siblings, they were competitive with each other. So he made it a nightly contest with the winner getting some prize. The winner would be all smiles. The losers were in tears knowing they’d have to wait until tomorrow night for redemption from their losing performance. 😉 It works.  Ideally, you want people involved in the measuring. Now some data will be easily captured by whatever computer systems are in place. Other measurements might require a more manual process. It’s important that people see the true value of the measurements to help them achieve more – and to have more fun (be more engaged in the outcomes). Remember, everybody in your organization wants to know where and how they fit in the world at work…and how they make a difference. This is how they’ll know! One easy suggestion is to start with the speedbumps and roadblocks they encounter every day (or at least every week). A great point of connection and collaboration is to communicate your commitment to help them remedy these frustrations. Work together to measure the negative impact of these constraints. How much time is lost? What’s the financial cost? Figure out whatever you can quantify that will help determine the true impact of the impediment so you can then figure out what needs to be done to reduce or eliminate those measurements. Then keep measuring as you implement the changes! Part of this will involve systems and processes. Simplify, simplify, simplify.  I arrived as a new leader and quickly found an organization steeped in manual forms. I asked staff to give me a copy of every form being used. Thinking this would be a straightforward task I quickly learned they weren’t quite sure exactly how many forms they were using. Nobody had ever gathered them all together to inventory them.

Day 28 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. Let’s continue our conversation about keeping score, measurements. About 15 years ago I decided to get more intentional about my physical health and fitness so I signed up at a gym. From the get-go I went five days a week for about 45 minutes to an hour. At first, I didn’t really track anything. I mostly just wanted to develop the new habit of going regularly and I focused on cardio. I’d see guys hitting the weight machines and free weights, many of them keeping notes. They were writing down how many repetitions and how much weight they did on any given date. I got acquainted with a few of them and would watch them increase the weights. Sometimes they’d increase the weight and the number of repetitions. I started to do the same thing except I’d keep the numbers in my head. Admittedly, I wasn’t using as many machines or as many free weights so tracking my numbers wasn’t a big challenge. But I was well on my well to better understand my strength levels once I began to track the numbers.  The same thing applies to your enterprise. You can think you’re excellent – as I could have easily thought of myself as being fit and strong – but the numbers don’t lie. And they display our progress or lack of.  High-performance organizations accurately measure their important numbers. These numbers become the scorecard for everybody in the organization. People enjoy tracking it and grow increasingly competitive to pursue improving the numbers. Nobody sees such tracking as punitive. Instead, it’s rewarding – like seeing the pins you knock down when you’re bowling. In 2012 research published in Personnel Psychology reported that high-performing employees are 400% more productive than the average. Plenty of other research bears out that enterprises who undertake some systematic process of high-performance (think Lean, Six Sigma, or a variety of the many other options) realize an improvement between 25-40%. Merely picking a horse to ride, and committing to it results in significant growth and improvement.  Far too many organizations approach their daily work in a willy-nilly fashion. Going through the motions, putting one foot in front of the other without strategic purpose or intent isn’t the way high-performing enterprises operate. Avoid joining or remaining among the ranks of the average or below-average organizations. It’s time to soar, but first, you must know where you are so you can better determine where you’d like to go.  When I started 30 minutes on a treadmill at brisk speed (setting the machine on 2.8-3) would wind me. Within a month I was able to increase it to 3.8-4 and maintain that for an hour. I was committed to walking at a fast pace, not running. I was (and still am) too old to develop knee problems resulting from running. By measuring the time and the speed, I was able to set my sites on improving. My goals were constantly moving forward because I wanted evidence that my fitness was improving. I didn’t want to just feel like I was getting better. I wanted to know. For sure. So it goes at work. Everybody feels like they’re doing pretty well. Some, perhaps most, will claim, “We’re doing our best.” The reality is few have a clear idea of what their best might even be. Watch any video or documentary about military training, like the SEALS, and you’ll quickly realize these candidates mostly didn’t think they could push themselves to the point required to qualify for achieving entry to such a prestigious group. Those who don’t make it likely have the physical skills required, but they lack the mental toughness to go beyond whatever limits exist in their own mind.

Day 27. Four more sessions including today and then we’re have completed our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course, a series of about 5 hours of real-world leadership coaching. You’re doing the work. I’m only here to help spur you on to do the work by showing you a few things you may not have considered, by sharing some insights that might be helpful, and by giving you some concepts that might help you move forward in your own leadership journey. Thank you for being part of this 30-day journey.  High-performance leadership focuses on creating a high-performance environment where people can do their best work, where they can grow, where they can be challenged, and where they can see how their contributions make a difference. Your leadership relies on knowing what is real and true. It’s been said that fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. You don’t want to be ruled by fear, but by reality.  That means you have to have great, accurate information. Data. Intel. Analysis. Measurements. Great leaders embrace knowing the numbers, the facts, and other data that can help make better decisions. After all, the daily work of a leader is communicating and making a series of decisions. Usually, the decisions aren’t “bet the farm” magnitude, but the higher up you go, the more critical the decisions become. The CEO can make a decision that can have an enormous negative or positive impact. The staff supervisor can make a decision that will move the needle, but the repercussions will be much smaller than those made by the CEO.  I must reiterate the progression of leadership because these ingredients matter. Greatly. Especially that foundational ingredient, humility. It’s not just an honorable character trait. It’s practical. Without it, you’ll be robbed of seeing things more clearly and accurately.  Business intelligence is steeped in curiosity, seeking answers – and questioning existing answers. Effective leaders want to make sure they’re seeing things accurately. Understanding is an accurate comprehension of something. Delusion isn’t helpful. False assumptions aren’t either.  Survey organizations and ask them if they’re high-performing. Most, maybe all, will say they are. Probe more deeply and you’ll quickly find they stake their claim on how they feel about themselves. They think they’re high-performing, but they really don’t know.  Let’s Go Bowling In The Dark. Wanna Go? Who wants to go bowling when you can’t see the pins? You have no idea how many pins you knocked down. You hear the ball rolling down the lane. You hear pins fall. But you can’t see anything. No way to properly measure your success or failure. Nobody would sign up for such a game. The fun of bowling isn’t merely the act of tossing the ball down the lane. It’s in the work of trying to knock down as many pins in a single throw as possible.  Why then do you think your team or organization should perform at a high level when nobody can keep score? Lots of people are disengaged because they can’t see how or if they’re making any difference.  Measurements – keeping score – is important so you can objectively know if you’re making progress. Feeling good about yourself isn’t an accurate measurement. Those annual performance reviews tend to not be performance-based at all, but rather how somebody feels. Those feelings may be based on something, but often the basis isn’t something very quantifiable.  What is quantifiable in your organization? Likely anything and everything. Does it mean everything is important? Not necessarily. You must be careful to connect the dots. Perhaps you have to be even more careful not to connect other dots that don’t belong together. 

Session 26. These are the last five sessions. But don’t zone out because these are going to be important lessons for your leadership journey. Back on day 15, we talked about writing your story. Let’s circle back around to that today with a context you may not have considered.  To keep things simple, let’s consider ourselves as the main character in our story. After all, this is our life. There’s nothing necessarily selfish about it. We’re looking through our eyes, seeing things the way we see them, and experiencing what we’re experiencing. Perfectly natural.  And we’ve got two primary options in living the life of this main character that is OUR life. We’re busy writing a hero story or a victim story.  Think of yourself in those terms. Hero or victim. Examine your life and you’re writing one story or the other. But your story is comprised of many smaller stories. There’s your overall story and then there are the specific chapters of your story. All those little stories that sum up your main story.  From King Arthur to Sherlock Holmes to Superman – heroes are always heroes. Sometimes they suffer defeat. Sometimes they make foolish decisions. Even superheroes aren’t perfect. You aren’t either. And that’s okay.  But their overall story – the way everybody would characterize their lives – is the life of a hero.  When we think of victims we may think of people who were murdered. No matter what kind of person they were we may feel sadness, sympathy, and even sorrow that somebody’s lost their life to such violence. In some cases, people are killed because they’re involved in dangerous things. Or they’re in dangerous situations. Or they’re choosing to be around dangerous people. But sometimes murder is random. Sometimes it’s not through any fault or decision on the part of the victim.  But there’s a much wider population of victims. In 2019 there were just under 20,000 murder victims in the U.S. That’s entirely too many murders, but a single murder is too many. Sadly, the people who are writing a victim story of their own life number in the millions and millions. People who are choosing to see themselves as pawns of others, or of circumstances beyond their control.  As a leader, you must write a hero story for yourself and for others you hope to influence. All the people you serve can be influenced by you to write their own hero story. But only if you show them how.  Heroes Emerge From Burning Buildings, Not Instagram Photos There’s something we don’t often consider about heroes and that’s, “How are they made?” Well, they’re not made by living an Instagram life filled with great vacations, exotic cars, and beautiful people. Heroes were made at 911 by greasy, sweaty, exhausted firefighters trying to lead people out of those towers. Heroes were made by a group of randomly thrown together strangers on an airliner when they decided to storm the terrorists and bring a plane destined to kill others. Heroes emerge from disasters, calamities, crises, danger, obstacles, and bad situations.  Sometimes leaders emerge in such situations. Sometimes leaders find themselves in those circumstances.  Everybody can be a leader because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to influence others and do for them what they can’t do for themselves.  Everybody can be a hero because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to rise to the occasion and refuse to be victimized by others or by a situation, no matter who or what caused it. 

Day 25. The countdown begins as we’re winding our way down in this 30-Day Micro Leadership Course, but we’re going to finish strong with some pivotal lessons.  The vertical pressures every leader must manage are “boots in the dirt” versus “eye in the sky.” Now we’re going to consider the horizontal pressures, “YOU” versus “a focus on others.” Back on day 13, we talked about the power of the corner. Helping clients paint themselves into a corner where they’re able to face themselves in the mirror and stop making excuses is a major component of the value I provide. It’s work that’s entirely focused on them, which could sound selfish until you understand the context. Self-awareness and self-improvement are necessary if we’re going to increase our value to others. It’s not selfish because the work is about getting better, growing, and making ourselves better able to serve others. The ROI (return on investment) is higher than anything you can do – for yourself and anybody in your life.  Imagine if we all were able to paint ourselves into that corner where we could at long last eliminate all the excuses in our lives. Where we could finally start doing the work of a hero, not a victim. Think of all the positive impacts we could have individually and collectively were to do that. Well, that’s the point of putting a focus on YOU. Like the vertical pressures, these horizontal pressures swing back and forth as needed. At any given point you’ll be in one vertical spot and one horizontal spot. Circumstances will warrant which. Depending on your role and responsibilities you’ll likely be spending more time in some than others. For example, yesterday we talked about how the higher up you go in your leadership the more likely you’ll spend more time in the sky than in the dirt. It’s also likely that the higher you go – the more experienced you are – the more you’ll focus on others and less on yourself. Many excellent senior leaders find themselves with more long-term strategic thinking (eye in the sky) and thinking of how to best serve their employees (focus on others), but almost all admit they’re constantly and consistently trying to figure out how to improve themselves (YOU). There are no hard, fast rules. The key is knowing when to go where and knowing how long to stay there.  These horizontal pressures are very different than the vertical ones because these two aren’t quite as distinctly different. Humility is key to it all.  The most accomplished and effective leaders confess they’re always focused on these two horizontal pressures simultaneously. That’s very different than boots in the dirt and eye in the sky work. But it’s not only possible, but it’s also preferable.  The ER physician invested money and years to learn the skills necessary to treat patients effectively. She didn’t just check the box on her learning and then stop. She’s constantly learning and improving, focusing on herself. But her focus is purpose-driven. She’s doing all this work for herself because it’s her choice – her life – but she’s also doing it because she wants to help others.  The same is true for leadership. Get focused on yourself so you can positively influence others and so you can do for others what they can’t do for themselves.  Besides, how hypocritical is it for leaders to expect and urge others to grow and improve if they’re unwilling to do that themselves? Don’t be a hypocrite. A focus on others. That’s where the rubber meets the road.  Your impact on the group,