How to Develop Yourself So You Can Help Others
Soon I’ll share my list of Best Things to Buy to Stay Centered through Shelter at Home (and Beyond!).
This is a lie. But actually, here’s a snapshot. It’s 7am. Contacts in. Brew coffee. Meditate, journal and walk if time allows. Kids fed, check email from teachers, check mine, begin….
But the universe laughs, time does not allow and I don’t care enough to “create the time” myself, so I find myself bang in the start of the work/school day.
Then the phone rings.
“All I know is that they just announced,” my client said. “I’m trying to figure out who’s still here, who is gone. I don’t even know who on my own team is laid off. I am heart-broken — I mentored some of them for years. What can I do to thank them, to celebrate with them, to help them? This time, nothing seems to be appropriate, but I’ll keep trying.”
==== Flashback to a very different era: Bubbly bled over champagne glass rims. The average human’s height at The Bubble Lounge (seriously a real place) was at least 7 inches taller than the average in “The City” (which, competitively speaking back then, referred NOT to New York but to the city of San Francisco).
Send-off drinks have been a part of San Francisco’s tech culture since I “grew up” there through my 20’s and 30’s. I had one roommate (incredibly successful) who was laid off and re-hired at such a fast pace through the dot-com bust that she was on severance from THREE COMPANIES simultaneously. (This was long before hashtag #winning, or even hashtags.)
Then, “lay-off parties” were a real thing — and attended in glitter and Camper boots, accompanied by oysters and hogwash. Then company foldings became our only social life. And then, bars were mostly empty, save few early-arrival hipster trust-afarians. Then, most of the bars filed for bankruptcy and closed.
In contrast, today in 2020 the closure is far-reaching, absolute and instant. No goodbye toast to celebrate a layoff, no more 3pm happy hours followed by a night-into-morning of clubbing, ending up at the End Up (a club which served breakfast and whose management most certainly knew how to sanitize hard surfaces with bleach).
Today, we say goodbye to laid off employees at best with a Zoom call, a camera-facing toast peppered with “this is crazy” or “the kids are falling apart and need to go to bed” or “will you move back in with your parents now or live in isolation for the next couple months… or longer?” Our work-mode device — laptop and video-con — is our new human-mode.
Floors vibrating with music, bar-smell, big hugs and a multitude of accidental bumps against our usually-distant teammates’ arms… these were delicious ornaments that intensified the feeling of connection and meaning which used to accompany our goodbyes.
They’re not options now.
In lieu of ornaments, we influence remotely. Our words are one thing. Our PRESENCE is another. One leadership principle remains, regardless of how “well” your company is doing:
In leadership, your instrument is your SELF.
Now — more than ever — it is essential for us to be conscious and integrated. We can choose how we show up, how we engage, how we connect with others, and how and where we provide support.
In my podcast episode, How to Develop Yourself so You Can Help Others — Self as Instrument, T-Groups, and Leadership Coaching , my guest David Shechtman and I discuss the role your SELF plays when you are engaging with others, leading others and helping others. David clearly lays out how to make yourself clean and clear so that you can lead through the very way that you are BEING. Rest. Be. Lead. Show up.
Ultimately, it all starts with you. So how do you do this?
Highlights:
- 4:24 — Self Check-in Exercise. David tells a story of a search party in Iceland looking for a woman who was already there.
- 12:17 — The enforced simplicity of our current circumstances is causing self-as-instrument to be a very vital part of our survival at this moment. It has forced us to look in the mirror and see what is there.
- 14:22 — David defines self as instrument work that we can use to look at our purpose and how we are showing up in the world and for ourselves and for others. It is important for leaders and managers because it is the conscious use of one’s whole self in a helping relationship for effectiveness.
- 17:54 — If you are a leader who is going to help others on a personal or professional level, then being a clean and well established instrumental as self is vital for that help to actually be helpful.
- 19:53 — It is essential to see the seer. Be aware of how you are showing up and explore by taking a step out of being in the moment as well as operating fully while plugged in so that you can see how you can maybe improve and do it better in the future.
- 25:52 — Feedback and 360s are great ways to understand the efficacy of leadership and helpfulness.
- 28:21 — The most important part of leadership is the self and not the methods or the processes. You can have methods and you can have a process but the leader and the individual exist as the primary instrument of the work. Most people are looking for external tools or instruments to make them a great coach or leader but are not looking to themselves as the vital tool.
- 36:06 — David explains his hilarious experience with the T-Group format and how uncomfortable but beneficial holding space for learning can be.
- 46:31 — David gives direct advice to listeners and leaders who really want to come in as a clean instrument to be of most service to those around them and their business or family.
Originally published at https://caneel.com.
