​The constant uncertainty and ambiguity that comes with our daily lives creates the conditions for stress, burn-out, and a sense of emotional upheaval. The leaders I work with, now more than ever, are looking for coping skills and practices to work with the demands of today’s constantly changing and challenging world.  Over the past two years, many of us, including leaders in the workplace, have experienced significant external stressors outside of our control, that have created uncertainty in our personal and professional lives. In addition, the internal stressors that we, and especially leaders, place on ourselves can result in even greater emotional upheaval and a steady stream of stress induced chemicals, such as adrenalin and cortisol, to flow through our bodies.

The real and perceived threats to our livelihoods and sense of well-being, can leave us wondering if we can sustain what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing. These stressful conditions call for a menu of mindfulness practices that can help us to better manage these ups and downs. The most important foundational practice is to develop a greater sense of self-awareness about what triggers us, what is happening in our bodies, how we respond, and how we might be negatively impacting ourselves, and those around us.
For leaders, mindfulness practices are more essential than ever, as employees deal with higher levels of stress as well. As we know, people at work who are also stressed, are more likely to make assumptions about everything leaders say (or do not say), actions leaders take (or do not take), and the emotions leaders exhibit. Mindfulness practices help leaders to understand themselves, observe their conscious and unconscious behaviors, explore effective ways to work with their emotions, and the emotions of others during times of heightened stress.

More important still, everyday practices of mindfulness can calm chronically activated para-sympathetic nervous system stress response loops, that seriously impacts our health and well-being. Leaders might try these three mindfulness practices for everyday life:
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1. During transitions or between meetings – pause, take a deep breath, or two, or three, or more. Breathing deeply into our stomachs, sends a signal to our nervous system to be less activated, allowing us to refocus, regroup, and prepare for our next conversation.
2. When feeling stressed and emotional, notice where you feel the stress in your body and ask: What emotions am I experiencing; and where is the tension in my body? Noticing our emotions and bodies when under stress provides essential information to better understand what has triggered our reactions, and what to do to achieve a sense of balance in the moment.
3. When having a strong reaction to something or someone, ask: What story am I holding about this situation or person? This small but mighty practice allows us to look beyond your immediate situation for alternate perspectives, that could provide potential new solutions outside of our habitual ways of responding.

​In turbulent times like these, with a global pandemic that creates fear, anxiety, sadness, uncertainty and doubt, it’s reasonable that leaders may be finding it difficult to balance their emotions and remain open to others. I’m struggling with the barrage of information about spiraling death rates, and how to remain safe, that elevates my anxiety. When everything seems to be out of control, and our physical safety is compromised, we can manage our negative emotions by living life in small moments. The coping skills of zeroing in on the many moments in our days that are alright and going well, can change our perspective from overwhelmed to simmering to relaxed.

The Covid-19 virus landed in Washington state in February this year. Two months later, with thousands of positive cases, hundreds of deaths and stay at home requirements, we’ve been riding on an emotional roller coaster and anticipating it might be a while before we can get off.

 There are no human beings on this planet that have not been affected by this extremely contagious virus. I have deep empathy for those who’ve lost loved ones and who have been unable to console or say goodbye to them. It’s impossible to understand the shortages of safety equipment, masks, ventilators and tests for first responders putting their lives on the line every day. There are fear and anxiety driven behaviors such as food hording, price gouging, cheating people out of federal relief checks and loads of internet scams that prey on people.  We’re all wondering if there will be a new normal on the other side of this.

I’m taking my own advise at this time to focus moment to moment each day while practicing extreme self-care (ESC); sleeping well, exercising, eating healthy foods (with some guilty pleasures like ice cream and chocolate); calming the immune system by meditating, whatever will settle my mind and bring awareness to my reactivity to so many factors beyond my control.

In turbulent times it’s best to live our lives in consumable bites – day by day and moment to moment.

For leaders, practicing self-care feels like the last thing to do in the long list of mounting personal and business pressures. However, ESC with doses of self-compassion, grace and courage are now required more than ever, to help others in need of extra support. It’s a humbling act to observe and understand ourselves in these times of great uncertainty, to allow our emotions in fully, without minimizing, rationalizing, fixing or numbing them.

Leaders must extend their awareness beyond themselves, knowing that heightened negative emotions can spread to others quickly, so managing them well, and having good coping strategies saves everyone from taking a ride on the stress bus. With greater presence and a practice of appreciation, we’re more able to be intentional about our next actions and words, to be as authentic and balanced as possible. Appreciation moment to moment may include thinking about what is good in our lives, taking walks in nature, smelling everything new in the Spring air, being grateful for you own health and that of our family members as well.   

By making a choice every day to pay attention to and contribute to the many acts of kindness in our communities, to thank the many selfless health and essential workers and to support local food banks, will take us out of our own revelry to see the bigger picture around us. Living our best lives in times like these comes with a steep learning curve, however, with great uncertainty, we can choose to take it all in one moment at a time.

When time is scarce (when is it not these days) and the to-do list is endless, prioritizing important projects, deciding where to spend your time and maintaining energy are critical skills for the overburdened executive. Everyone today in corporate environments will tell you that time is the scarcest resource while work volume is increasing. With shrinking budgets, an over-abundance of information, twenty-four seven access on multiple devices and increasing business complexity, leaders must use their time wisely.

This is true for all executives, and for those new to C-levels roles especially, where a leader spends his or her time are the most essential skill sets to build credibility in the first year and beyond. Seasoned executives could benefit from periodic adjustments to their time, energy and resources without apology as well. A key part of this time adjustment is often managing the expectations of others’ about where you will focus your precious time, resources and energy.

Although coaching goals for executives are targeted at outcomes, such as increasing revenues, maintaining or decreasing costs, envisioning new lines of business, leading organizational change or communicating with key stakeholders effectively, our coaching conversations often include managing oneself effectively, monitoring where time is spent and recasting focus areas to use that time well.  Understanding where a leader currently spends his or her time might sound onerous, however, a quick calendar scan over a two to four-week time frame will illustrate well enough the big buckets of work and time allocated to them.

The narrative often goes like this, “I can’t believe I spend most of my time on short- term horizon activities, mostly in meetings, presiding over daily operations and initiatives.” CEO’s should be spending the bulk of their time on mid to long horizon strategies that only he or she can do for the company. Another observation that’s common is the frequency of important impromptu conversations that could potentially wait to be addressed in other venues such as staff meetings, scheduled 1:1 update(s) or handled by others (the direct reports of the CEO). It’s not that open-door policies are bad, in fact, they’re great for preserving or building healthy business cultures, however, executives must maintain a focus on the right work to move the business forward and delegate the rest.

As many of the executives I work with are making the transition to C-level jobs for the first time, letting go of the old functional responsibilities is a difficult habit to break. It’s tempting to keep a hand in old functional activities from one’s previous job, instead of fully handing them to other leaders so they can learn. Holding onto perfection expectations can be one reason for holding on to old work or simply that this work is a comfort zone, where one feels competent.

One new C-level executive, Jane, had grown up in the company before becoming CEO. When we reviewed where she was spending her time, as much as 40% of her time was spent in lower value activities that could be handled by her successor. Many leaders wait too long to hand work to other senior leaders, and instead are in some way micro-managing this work that now belongs to others in the organization. The question becomes, how deep should one go into functional work versus adopting a new role as coach or advisor to up and coming leaders?

Jane was also spending 25% of her time on a significant organization change project by sitting in long weekly change team meetings and attending satellite office meetings where the operational change work was taking place.  After evaluating her time, she moved from doer to sponsor in the change work, keeping an appropriate distance while her very capable senior leaders managed the daily tasks. When she became more of the thinking partner to them, she bought herself significant amounts of time to focus on important external community and legislative outreach.

She made significant changes in her mindset about the value of her contributions across the company and began to control her work, instead of it controlling her. As a result of her new focus on high priority work, Jane found she had more energy to give to her daily responsibilities. She started to feel energized instead of exhausted. For example, she changed how she utilized transition times before and after work and between meetings or conversations.

Jane used to catch up on emails while riding to work on the ferry. Instead of feeling behind on daily communications, she spent her ride time thinking about longer term opportunities for the company. As a result, she would arrive at work feeling more energized and proactive. She made sure that work processes were in place to manage annual planning work streams and delegated this accountability to her head of operations. When leaders would ask her questions about strategic planning deliverable(s) she would refer them to her COO.

Jane created what we called micro-practices during the day that would allow her to assess if she was focused on the right work, such as repurposing mornings, when she generally felt fresher, for ideating with her direct reports. She caught up on emails twice a day at specific times that were scheduled on her calendar as uninterrupted desk time. Jane gave herself permission to attend her favorite yoga class every week. She also allowed one late day a week to catch up if needed, otherwise she went home on time to be with her family on a more consistent basis.

One of the biggest improvements was testing her assumptions about meetings that had been on the corporate calendar for years. She asked, “do we still need this meeting or could be repurpose this time for something else or just getting work done?” Jane asked meeting owners to provide prereading materials and agendas in advance of each meeting, so everyone arrived ready to have the conversation they needed to have. This practice was about valuing everyone’s time, not just her own. Some meetings were changed to 50 minutes, instead of one hour, so she had time between conversations to relax, breathe deeply, refocus and prepare for the next conversation. Many of her lunch hour meetings with direct reports were shortened as well, and now included a 30-minute walk when the weather was good.  As a result of these small changes she found the transitions between meetings more relaxing and centering, and she gained back another 10-15% of her time on a monthly basis.

It took some time to get there, but eventually, Jane was unapologetic about spending her time on the highest leverage activities for the company. Modeling this approach, gave other senior leaders permission to test assumptions about where they spent their time. Over time, meetings became much more efficient and they had less of them on a weekly basis. Senior leaders took these approaches to their own teams, so the wisdom of valuing how people spent their time was passed along to others. This approach aligned with one of their company values of delivering high-quality work and excellence in company performance. Jane’s focused time, resources and energy approach and her ability to pay herself first, ultimately paid time forward for everyone in the company.