Monthly Archives: July 2020

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PERFECTION: THE ENEMY OF LEADERSHIP

More than two thirds of my current conversations with clients have a “perfectionism” theme. A constant voice inside us telling us that we are not good enough, our work is not good enough, we are not competent enough.

Giving into this inner voice, we demand and expect a lot of ourselves and others, working harder than we need to – instead of becoming effective and productive – ending exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed by the ongoing list of unrealistic expectations.

The continuous stress of this self-judgement reduces effectiveness and performance, and it makes it harder for you, demotivating and demoralizing your employees, choking teams of creativity and authenticity. It’s a high price to pay for perfection.

Perfectionism aims to avoid failure and prevent negative outcomes. This is both unrealistic and illogical. You simply cannot move forward and learn in the absence of mistakes. To combat perfectionistic tendencies, we must embrace mistakes and failures with humility and humour, accepting the fact that no human comes free of weaknesses or imperfections.

Instead of accepting the “perfectionistic” label, reject it and become focused on continuous improvement. Accepting perfectionism feels terrible because nothing is ever quite good enough. So change your focus, strive for excellence instead, which feels much greater because your focus is on being and doing your best.

Perfection is overrated. Just because you’re a perfectionist doesn’t mean you are perfect. Nobody is. Perfection does not exist. Aim for progress instead, and watch your life change for the better.

To your success,

Isabel

Isabel is a Peak Performance Strategist and experienced ICF Leadership Coach with over 20 years of international work experience holding senior positions within the hospitality industry in countries around the world, as well as Executive and Leadership coaching, mentoring and training. Isabel specializes in high performance strategy, leadership development and building organizational culture. More available on www.isabelvalle.com

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COMBAT DECISION FATIGUE AND HOW TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISIONS EVERY TIME

Making decisions, even small ones, can wear us down over time. Every day we make endless decisions about what we eat and wear, what we work on, what we do with our spare time. By bedtime, the average person has made 35,000 decisions! Every decision requires time and energy, and depletes our willpower. Add to that our addiction to fill our days being busy for the sake of being busy, and you my friend have got a great recipe for disaster. Regardless of how strong you are, your ability to make the best choices can eventually run out.

When many of the business leaders come to me initially, they talk about feeling drained, stressed, scattered, irritable, having physical fatigue, increased anxiety, tension headaches and even digestive issues, which makes them feel unproductive and overwhelmed for the majority of their day, even though they try to eat healthy, excercise and sleep well. If that’s you, I dare say you may not actually have physical fatigue, what you may have is called decision fatigue, and it affects us way more than you realise.

With decision fatigue, you’re not consciously aware of being tired, but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts. This may cause you to become reckless in your decision-making, acting impulsively instead of thinking things through. Or you may simply do nothing, which can create bigger problems in the long run.

Over the last few months I have witnessed so many of my clients having to completely adapt and reinvent who they are, what they do and how they go about moving forward, trying to set themselves up for success amid a global pandemic which gives little signs to ease up. The level of unpredictable complexity we are now facing has made many of us re-evaluate our options, explore new avenues, and try to come up with new pathways to help us stay afloat in today’s volatile environment.

For some, the prospect of a stable job or business has been taken away, with nearly half the global workforce at risk of losing income due to COVID 19 alone, according to the International Labour Organization.

For those who remain employed or in business, comes a period of intense evaluation of business practices, reinventing the wheel, entire new ways of creating value in the marketplace and never thought of ways in which to lead people to deliver results.

Today, we are faced by a world where millions of businesses globally are barely breathing. These are the real faces of the world of work. If we don’t learn to adapt and make critical decisions to help us navigate through this period of unprecedented history, many will simply perish.

Here’s something you need to know. Decision fatigue is caused by being forced to make too many decisions over a fixed period of time. There comes a point where good choices and thoughtful decision making cannot be expected from the depleted brain. This relates to all kinds of decisions, and the exhaustion leaves people open to making poor decisions, whether in their business, their health or their relationships, making us hasty or stopping us from making decisions all together.

But fear not, by changing your habits and setting up the right routines, you can decrease anxiety and conserve your energy for the decisions that really matter. Learning how to manage your decision-making can help you avoid feeling drained and conserve your mental capacities, much needed at a time like this!

Some signs of decision fatigue include procrastination, impulsivity, avoidance and indecision. If this sounds like you, take notice. It is a great concern what happens to our capacity to make good decisions when our brains are out of fuel.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can keep this from happening. Learn how you can combat decision fatigue, replenish your willpower and boost your productivity during a decision-heavy day with these simple steps:

1. Make less decisions.

Making too many decisions will stress you out. Take minor decisions off your plate, which take a lot of decision energy. If you get overwhelmed by lunch menus, take your lunch to work. Prepare your work clothes the night before.

By making fewer decisions, you’ll be giving your brain a standing chance to recharge and recover. Many laugh at my schedules, to-do lists, weekly food menus and shopping lists, but I’m the one laughing – they keep me on track, streamline my choices, which helps me stay ahead of my week and what happens in it, taking the guess out of how I run my days and weeks. Scale back and find ways to simplify your life as much as possible.

Hobbies, activities and volunteering are all great and wonderful things to do, but if you’ve reached the point where you’re overwhelmed, it’s time to drop the excess commitments in your life. Self-care must come first.

2. Delegate decisions.

I see many struggle with delegating – whether tasks or decisions to others. Many of us feel we must do it all to get it done properly or because we don’t have time to train others to do it as well as us, but at what cost? You can delegate decisions the same way you delegate tasks. If you keep complaining about how much you have on your plate, it’s tme to give responsibility to others for some decision-making. Stop micromanaging and do yourself a favour – you’re not the only person that can get things done, have confidence that others will also deliver.

Pass some decision-making to employees, spouses, children, friends and family members. Others can pick good options too. And it doesn’t always have to be perfect. There are way more important things in life, like knowing what decisions to pass on. 🙂 Letting others be part of the decision making can be very empowering for others and shows that you trust them. So help them help you!

3. Follow a process.

Being systematic about important or difficutlt decisions can help you become more decisive. This will help you analyze your choices by understanding options available, potential obstacles, and evidence to back up your decision. Having a consistent model to follow can also help you clear up confusion and keep your emotions at bay, so you can objectively weigh in options. For instance, a simple example would be:

• Identify problem
• gather information
• identify opportunities
• identify potential obstacles
• weigh the evidence
• choose best option
• take action
• review decision.

“Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.” – Mark Twain

4. Make priority decisions in the morning.

We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders, constantly thinking about what needs to be done. Do yourself a favour and write all that’s pending inside your head down in paper, where it can kept safe and can be tackled accordingly. Once you’ve written them down, put them in order of priority and tackle the most pressing ones first. That way, your most important decisions will be done when your energy it still at its highest.

For most of us – even night owls – the best time of day is in the morning — that’s when we make accurate and thoughtful decisions. By afternoon, most people hit a plateau, and as the day wears on decision fatigue sets in, and we start making riskier decisions.

Don’t risk making snappy decisions. If you are feeling overwhelmed about making a decision, create micro-deadlines that force you to act early and not keep pondering your choices. Better to space out decisions over time than to make critical decisions at the eleventh hour.

5. Avoid analysis-paralysis.

Stop second-guessing yourself. We often get trapped in the mindset that everything we do needs to be perfect, and this puts a lot of pressure on us to make the “right” choice, because a “wrong” choice could somehow ruin something. The truth is, in most cases, there is no right or wrong choice, you can only go with the information you have at the time and hope for the best.

The most important aspect in decision making is to review your decision early to confirm whether it was the right one, or to recalibrate as needed if it wasn’t. So stop wasting time trying to come up with the perfect solution. It simply doesn’t exist. The more decisions you make, the more experienced and comfortable you’ll get at it.

You cannot make progress without making decisions.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION EVERY TIME?

If you’re feeling torn about making a decision ask yourself: do I feel expansive when I think about this or contracted? pay attention to the answer. If you feel an instant sense of dread or heaviness or something in your body just going “no”, or you actually notice your body subtly moving back, those can all fall under the umbrella of feeling contracted. On the other hand, you might ask yourself do I want to do this, and all of a sudden inside you notice a very subtle shift where something feels lighter, something feels brighter, even a sense of excitement. Perhaps your physical body actually moves forward. Or even if it sounds a little scary, something in you just feels bigger. That would be an example of something that is expansive. These are all clues that your intuitive inteligence give you. Learn to notice to those clues if you want to feel at peace with the decisions you make. Contraction for me is a big no and expansion is a big yes. Try it for yourself.

Beyond tapping into your intuitive intelligence, you can also ask yourself: what’s the worst thing that can happen if I do this? You’d be surprised how many people don’t take the time to really drill down into the worst case scenario. Once you do, ask yourself: How exactly, specifically, would I deal with it? Is it a matter of losing some money, could you lose your job or your business? You know, sometimes the worst thing that could happen is that you’d be embarrased by making a mistake. If it’s beyond what you’re willing to risk, then there’s your answer. Don’t do it.

If still in doubt, move onto the next step, which is looking on the flipside and imagining what could be the best case scenario. Think through what are all the possible payoffs that might come from saying yes to this decision? Will you learn a tremendous amount about yourself? Are there financial / creative / freedom upsides that can only come if you take a chance and say yes?

Finally, if after considering the above steps you still find yourself unsure about which decision to make, it’s time to move into action. Because for certain decisions to become clear, you must first experience them.
You have to find a way to experience it. So I want you to ask yourself, is there some way that I can test drive this opportunity? Can I take a first step? Can I take a class? Can I do a test run in some way? Can I try it on a small scale, even if it’s just an experiment?

So for example, the first time I considered running marathons, I could hardly run 100 meters without trippping my back. It seemed impossible, and yet I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Before committing to getting myself through the process of training for long distance running, I experimented with smaller milestones. My first kilometer, my fastest 5 km time, ways to keep my back strong through the pounding on the road, etc. By the time I committed to the full process, I knew it was the right decision, and having experienced my growth, there was no resistance to the process at all, no matter how hard or scary it was. Trying something out before you go all in will help you get clear quickly and effectively.

On a final note, let me add a different perspective about decision making. Nothing is permanent. Most things you can stop, evolve or reverse. Even if the decision you make is wrong, or is not working out the way you thought it would, you can always catch it and change it.

Now I’d love to hear from you. Tell me: Do you have a decision you’ve been avoiding making lately? What’s your favorite method for decision making? How do you distinguish what the right decisions are for you? Post your answers in the comments below.

Isabel is an experienced Peak Performance Strategist with over 20 years of international work experience holding senior positions within the hospitality industry in countries around the world, as well as Executive and Leadership coaching, mentoring and training.
She specializes in high performance strategy, leadership development and building organizational culture to help leaders and their teams learn, grow and succeed.
Isabel is passionate about helping empower business leaders with the mindset, performance, skills and strategies that they need to get ahead.
More available on www.isabelvalle.com

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Can Kindness Make You a Stronger Leader?

I had the most incredible conversation with my 10 year old boy the other day about kindness. After the long stint doing online learning at home due to Covid 19, he was was very happy being back in school, catching up with his friends.

He was also particularly happy that he was able to catch up with his “crash”. He’d never been so open about his feelings about a girl with me before – cutest thing ever!

In the conversation, he confessed that another friend liked her too. I told him if he was OK with that, and he didn’t seem to mind. “The coolest girl in school is liked by tens of boys, so I’m lucky!” he said.

I asked him what it was about the coolest girl that made her so popular among boys, and he said she was pretty, sporty, confident and was good at lots of things.

When I asked him what was different about the girl he liked, he said kindness, and it really took me by surprise. He said he loves kindness, and watched how this girl practises kindness with everyone she knows. I so hope he keeps this trait as a must have quality for whoever happens to steal his heart in life.

I was reminded of another conversation we had a while back, when I was preparing a leadership talk for children at an international school. When I asked him what one of the main qualities of a leader was, he said: “Leaders are not bossy. They are kind”.
I wonder what makes a 10 year old get such a clear sense of something that’s so crucially important. And if a 10 year old can see it so clearly, how come adults don’t? At what point do we let go of the qualities that make us warm, charismatic, impactful leaders?

The fact is, there isn’t enough kindness in this world. It’s difficult to give and even harder to receive. And yet, research into organisations whose leaders put kindness first has shown that they have higher engagement and motivation levels, higher employee retention, and more innovation and creativity among employees. The fact is that your teams value kindness very highly.

Being friendly, generous and considerate will go a long way in getting your people to want to do their best at work. It really isn’t complicated: your employees want you to listen to them and their ideas and to show them you care. Don’t keep them guessing, you may have the best intentions at heart, but we are not mind-readers. If you want to earn the trust and respect of your people, you’re going to show kindness.

Unfortunately, this critical trait does not typically show among the top sough-after leadership skills one must nurture. Don’t let that put you off, practice some kindness and witness the impact it has on you and your people.
Whether you show empathy and compassion for employees going through a tough time at home, treating everyone at every level in the organization with the same respect, taking time to engage and communicate with people at all levels, and appreciating and recognising success in others, the list of act of kindness is vast.

The most successful leaders of our time are people -focused. They don’t just preach they are, they actually show on a daily basis that they do.
A word of warning though, being kind doesn’t mean you have to avoid making the hard decisions or come across as weak. Simply consider the impact your decisions have on people and take steps to ensure that they are treated fairly and with empathy.

Displaying kindness will make you a stronger leader. I challenge you to intentionally create acts of kindness with your staff – and those around you – daily.

To your success,

Isabel

Isabel is an experienced Peak Performance Strategist with over 20 years of international work experience holding senior positions within the hospitality industry in countries around the world, as well as Executive and Leadership coaching, mentoring and training.
She specializes in high performance strategy, leadership development and building organizational culture to help leaders and their teams learn, grow and succeed.
Isabel is passionate about helping empower business leaders with the mindset, performance, skills and strategies that they need to get ahead.
More available on www.isabelvalle.com
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It’s time to inject some tough love into the leadership conversation.

This is a candid conversation that I want to have openly with leaders all over, whether you are in a corporate leadership role or leading your own business. You may be very good at what you do, and you may have gotten promoted, gotten as far as you have in business because you excel at what you do. Congratulations! Your hard work, incredible capability and awesome gifts got you far. I hope this role is giving you the meaning and scope that you need to make you feel fulfilled and motivated to continute to move furhter ahead.

Yet if your role is not providing you with the sense that being in a position to lead others – and all of the headaches that come from it – is completely worth it, then it’s time to take a pause and re-evaluate your situation.

Forgive me for being blunt, but being a top performer in your role does not automatically make you an expert at leading people, and this fact requires some careful consideration.

Like the fact that many top performers who get promoted into leadership roles don’t particularly want to lead people. So let me ask you, is this what you really want? Because if you want to excel in a leadership role as much as you excel in the role itself, you will need to develop the skills to gather the troops and help them grow in unison towards a common vision, and the achievement of a common goal.

Leaders are not born. They are made.

So my first open and honest question is, do you want to lead others? are you willing to do what it takes to help people bring out the best in themselves and to foster a collaborative, high-performing environment that helps the team achieve results? I dare say this is no easy task – navigating through people’s complexities, creating a level playing field, finding a way to keep your employees engaged and motivated, wanting to give their all. I am serious, do you really want the burden of leading other people and their issues? or if given a chance, would you just rather stay within your own specialist role?

A sure thing is the fact that if you are not prepared to take on the new skillset of leading people, you are going to struggle, probably even come to resent your job, ending up stressed, overwhelmed, micromanaging and performing at far lower levels that you know you are capable of, hanging onto the job, hiding your insecurities.

You see, in a generalist role, you simply cannot apply a specialist mindset to find all the answers. You are going to have to become a generalist and upgrade your thinking, otherwise you will show up in ways that are going to compromise your performance in the leaders’s seat, ie. micromanaging, keeping distance from the team, removing yourself from the team dynamics, speaking lots and not listening enough, etc.

All of these misdirected behaviours will go onto creating an unmotivated, disengaged, unhappy workforce that will do just enough work to get their monthly cheque, and won’t hesitate to leave whenever another opportunity shows up, because there’s no loyalty, sense of belonging or a sense of contributing to something larger than their role.

If you take on the leadership role, you must learn to lead. Learn to lead yourself first, followed by learning to lead others. Because your team is counting on having a role model who they can be inspired and encouraged by, someone that can show them the way to tap into their potential and belief in their ability to be and do better than they themselves think is possible. You are going to have to learn to influence others to achieve organizational goals. Can you honestly say that you are comfortable doing that? And I don’t mean helping them reach targets by fear, intimidation and micromanaging.

Do you know how to positively influence others? how to build trust? how to interact with all of your followers from the bottom up? do you know how to effectively communicate with others? are you actively working in your credibility and authority as a leader?

Do you wholeheartedly embrace the decision making power that the organization has placed on you to create big positive impact through your people? are you up for the challenge? and if not, what are you doing about it?

Tension among human beings is inevitable. How do you comfortably navigate through people’s complexities? How do you demonstrate direction? How do you deploy the best resources needed for your people to do their best work?

Because having good intentions alone is not going to cut it…

Let me ask you, are you the right leader for this role and this team of people? is the group achieving its goals? and if they are not, are you blaming them or taking responsibility? do you know how to get to the root issue? do you know how to get everyone to work autonomously yet in great synch? Do you feel capable of delivering great value in your own role? do you own leadership? do you enjoy leading?

Do you know how to lead in a crisis, in uncertain times in an ongoing disruptive world? are you comfortable being decisive and visible? can you look ahead of the horizon in unusual times?

The choice is yours: leader and generalist or high performing specialist. And if you do, take your leadership seriously. Step up to the position. Learn to lead confidently and add value. Leadership has to be learnt and practised. If you haven’t asked for help, or your company has not offered it, it is time to start discussing how you can create bigger impact and greater results through the investment in leadership development.

The choice is yours: leader and generalist or high performing specialist.

We need strong leadership now more than ever before. This is not about how you start, but how you finish. Set yourself up for success and win long term.

Start where you are, and draft a roadmap to help you become the leader you are meant to be. Embrace the fact that most of us aren’t born leaders, we are made through hard work and dedication. Own it, and watch your efforts create massive positive impact on yourself, your people, your company and the world at large. If you choose to lead, take responsibility for guiding your people into a better future.

Leadership is tough, and yet it is one of the most rewarding legacies you can leave behind. Set the example, and watch the ripple effect take a life of its own.

Ready to get honest with yourself? Download my free “Questions Every Leader Should Think About” to start your journey of self-awareness and become an effective leader.

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To your success,

Isabel