Apartment Leadership
New Year – Same You
Another trip around the sun is done and across the globe, the ink has barely dried on a fresh list of new year’s resolutions. The “new you” is a concept driven by the marketers and newsy types who would sell you their magazines filled with ways to improve upon yourself. Lose some weight, start that program, sign up for the gym, pay for the class, and purchase the organizational tools that look so cool on your social media feed where everyone else’s pantry screams perfection (does any even cook or eat there?). In those same photos, all the beautiful people seem to live in perfectly curated spaces filled with white sofas, gauzy linens, and beautiful baubles. My friend used to say, “Where is the junk mail?”, a phrase that was intended to encompass all the accouterments of a lived-in space – the toys, the inevitable crayon marks, and handprints, laundry spilled out, and books piled precariously. The disparity between the fake utopia and your very real life leaves you feeling like you just don’t measure up.
The “new you” resolution setup is a gimmick that is almost certain to fail. It is designed that way for the very reason that it lures you into the next round of promotions to make your life more Instagrammable. I would offer you this perspective instead. It is unnecessary to create a “New You” when the current You is already just fine. There will always be opportunities to grow and evolve but I encourage you to first begin with some self-reflection and a hearty appreciation for the wondrous gifts of your existing body, mind, and soul.
Reflections
Here’s an exercise – take pen and paper and draft a list of good things you contributed last year to the world. It all counts – the big and small things – because every act of kindness, empathy, generosity, and love had a positive impact on someone else, a value that was generated by your existing good self. Not some imagined future You who might be ten pounds lighter or ten years younger or driving a better car. The now You. The real You. See, the real you was just the right person who was needed at that moment to bring comfort or joy or relief to someone else.
The other important things to consider are the acts that pay into you, that fill your tank, and enable you to have the bandwidth to feed into others. I know, “self-care” has become overused to the point that it has lost its meaning. People quickly equate self-care to bubble baths and pedicures, neither of which make my personal list. I like to think of self-care in terms of the promises I make to myself that I actually keep. Being honorable to myself serves to remind me that I am worth the investment of my time and resources such that in the end, it makes me a better man which is essential in my quest to be a better husband, father, friend, and leader.
Rewind
The last two years have been a blur of evolution at warp speed. It almost feels like a science fiction movie, somehow not real. Times like these make self-reflection even more important. But, if you didn’t keep a journal as part of your routine to capture your experiences, the age of technology will lend you quite a hand. From your social media posts to your Outlook sent folder, you will find the fertile soil of your life as it unfolded, and the photos app on your phone literally tracks the images of your days and weeks.
Summarize
A period of reflection on the past year as viewed through those lenses will bring clarity about where you spent your time and what you prioritized. It will also start to become obvious where your life is out of kilter – where what you say is important to you doesn’t align with how you actually apply your time. Therein lies the secret of the areas that will benefit from intentional evolution in your life.
Forget about the fad of “new you” and instead seize the opportunity to move the needle of your actions in line with your intentions. Baby steps.
Mirror Mirror
Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash
Have you listened to our episode of Collective Conversations last week featuring Rommel Anacan? If not, I encourage you to check it out because this was an interview filled with pearls of relationship wisdom. Rommel is passionate about helping people win in relationships and in life.
He spoke about the cultural pervasiveness of sarcasm or snark and how those behaviors are perceived as a good thing on social media and even in person. It’s true – what began as fodder for comedians is now often weaponized as posts and comments vie to outwit all prior commenters, seizing “likes” as prizes that validate the writer’s rapier wit. Then Rommel said something that was so powerful in its truth. “Sarcasm is a relational killer.”
That statement is worth a pause. Take a moment and embrace the honesty of those words.
Another form or purpose behind sarcasm is found in self-deprecating statements. People who make those comments often have an internal message center that says something like “I will make the joke about my weakness, body size, past failures, and mistakes so that I say it first. No one can hurt me if I make the joke before they can.” Inside that dark humor lies a bundle of genuine vulnerabilities.
Turn the Mirror Around
When seeking to craft honest connections that benefit everyone involved, it is essential to develop the skills to create and hold safe spaces in those relationships. Before you run headlong into an attempt to force psychological safety, I encourage you to stop and turn the mirror around and do the deep character work within yourself. Carl Jung is quoted as saying “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” There is truth in that statement. I remember being young and arguing with a sibling, only to hear an adult say, “You two don’t get along because you’re just alike.” – a homestyle version of Jung’s quote that I was to hear many more times before I was grown.
Part of that critical self-assessment includes some honest reflection with questions like these:
- What impact does my behavior have on others? People are generally quick to tell someone in a leadership position all the good things but rarely wade into problematic areas.
- Am I actively working to create a safe space? Am I intentional about it?
- What are my blind spots? Even the most self-aware among us have behaviors or catchphrases that fail to serve the people we interact with. It may sound innocuous in your head, but if it causes discomfort to others, then it damages relationship and interpersonal safety.
- Do I invite people to give me candid and even uncomfortable feedback?
- In what ways do I undermine the thing I say I want/believe?
Safe Spaces
Some of the most effective safe spaces start with vulnerable honesty. When a leader says, “The most important work we will do today is to create an environment where everyone feels heard and safe and where we gift each other with our honest and caring feedback. When I do or say something that puts your trust at risk, I ask you to please speak up. I need to learn from those blind spots, and I am humbly asking you to help me.” Modeling what it looks like when someone calls you out and how you react to it is powerful. People trust what they see far more than what they hear.
The honor of leading a team comes with so much more than an impressive title. It brings the responsibility to genuinely recognize the whole human in your care. Educate yourself about the many ways to create safe spaces that protect the sanctity of your relationships and ensure that everyone feels valued and respected.
Hopeful Struggles
If you subscribe to my newsletter The Weekly Rundown, you might have noticed my book recommendation for Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to begin engaging with Brené’s content. She is a prolific writer, speaker, and social scientist with an incredible ability to put language to truth that brings perspective and speaks directly to the soul. I found this nugget while reading her book; “Hope is a function of struggle.” Woah.
Sense of Scarcity
Many of us learned a sense of scarcity from our own lived experiences. When there was never enough food, clothes, time with parents, or a sense of belonging with peer groups, we learned not to trust in our worthiness. It follows then that we might seek to avoid the pain associated with those unmet needs and to prevent our children from the feeling of not having whatever it is they need or want. Check out Instagram children’s birthday party images for proof of just how over the top we are willing to go in this pursuit.
The fear of scarcity fuels a host of helicopter parenting behavior that ultimately harms our children more than it helps. When we intervene to protect hurt feelings or negative consequences, we deny our children their opportunity to learn from experiences. Brené says that hope is a function of struggle. People with the highest hopefulness have the knowledge that they can move through adversity, therefore when we take adversity away from our children, we diminish their capacity for hope. Yikes! The best intentions often meet unexpected ends.
Cheating Others
In one of my daily vlogs recently, I posited that we cheat others out of the opportunity to be better versions of themselves. In that particular context, it was about holding everyone in the room accountable to the shared values of the group. For example, if one person is not listening but instead spending all their time on the phone or is otherwise distracted, that person is obviously cheating the others in the room. But the harder task remains. The person or people who saw that behavior and failed to address it were cheating the offender out of the chance to improve and cheating themselves out of the chance to become better leaders and learn the art of healthy confrontation.
Just as helicopter parenting hurts our kids, ignoring poor behavior at work hurts everyone. In another vlog, I propose the value in these four words, “What do you think?” When an employee or direct report asks you a question, the easy thing is to answer it. Your years of experience mean you can quickly respond and move on to other things. But your real responsibility is to help that person grow. Ask clarifying questions, help them hone down to the real problem, then ask, “What do YOU think?” Teaching that team member how to talk through problems and arrive at their own decision empowers and fortifies them for the next challenge.
We are all made better by the struggle. It isn’t always easy, but it is the only way to truly grow your personal and professional relationships.
In what ways has struggle made you a more effective leader, partner, or parent? Share your stories with us!
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All the Right Answers
In our earliest educational experiences, we learn the value of knowing all the answers. The delight of being the first to raise your hand and give the correct response is a simple thrill that reinforces the quest to study hard, fill in the blanks, and make good grades. I recall being reminded of the dangers ahead if you screwed up and scarred your permanent record. Where is that record anyway? Who keeps it and will it really be pulled out and held up as evidence of my value? Or the lack thereof? Somehow, I doubt it.
In grades K-12 followed by college or trade school, each includes its own forms of testing. Students cram their brains chock full of facts and theories, some valuable and others not so much. As you grow in your career and earn promotions based on your knowledge, skills, and ability to generate results, there comes a time when it is no longer possible to know all the answers. The best leaders do not even try to know them all.
Somewhere in the gap between knowing how to do everything to leading a broader team lies the biggest stumbling ground for new leaders. Even the most successful managers can struggle to let go of the intricate details and learn to keep an eye on the bigger picture upon moving up the leadership ladder, a delicate and endless balancing act where results are always important but need to be achieved through the work of others.
The failure doesn’t fall on these leaders of tomorrow, it lands squarely on the leaders of today. We have a responsibility for the long-term success of these rising leaders. The talent development path requires hard and soft skills – including the humanities. The industry is so focused on keeping up with the tech wars that the anthropological subjects get pushed to the side.
In 1989, Sydney Yoshida posed the “Iceberg of Ignorance” to easily identify the depth of understanding the front line problems in an organization. Sydney was a consultant who worked for a Japanese car manufacturer and discovered a lack of knowledge within the classic hierarchy. It shows the clear disconnect between front-line staff and upper management. The Iceberg of Ignorance breaks down like this:
- Front line staff see 100% of the problems
- Team leads see 74% of the problems
- Team managers see 9% of the problems
- Executives see 4% of the problems
I should note that these findings are related to the specific Japanese car manufacturer Sydney studied and are not necessarily identical to other companies, but my experience tells me that his results are within a fair margin of many other industries. For our purposes today, I want to lean away from the specific hierarchical percentages and into the opportunity found in his report.
I anticipate that the knee jerk reaction of a novice regional level manager might be to feel embarrassment about not having all the answers and to revert back to what they know, that is to get into the details to such an extent that the workers on the ground might feel judged, unheard, and usurped. The knock-on effect might then be for staff members to learn the lesson that speaking up only brings more intrusion, more burden, and no real assistance. Silencing your front-line teams is a real shame. It is a missed opportunity to use your best resources to solve genuine hurdles that impede performance, to properly support a novice leader, and worst of all, it leads to a dangerous erosion of your company’s culture.
If 100% (or any number that approaches it) of your front-line team members know the challenges they face in producing their work, therein lies your best resource to offer solutions. Honest, open-hearted conversations can lead to genuine responses that include “This is the problem. I think this is the solution.” The answer might be mechanical, or procedural, or some other fairly straightforward fix. You will never know if you don’t ask the right questions and train up your next-generation leaders in how to listen, move the boulders upstream, and execute real solutions through working with and supporting others.
What powerful iceberg-type lessons have you learned in your career? Please share them with the Multifamily Collective community!
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The Downside of Advantage
In his Oscar acceptance speech for his role in The Gladiator, Russell Crowe famously said, “…dreams like this seemed vaguely ludicrous and completely unattainable. For anybody who’s on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage – it’s possible.” It is true that most of us won’t win an Academy Award. We are each one nonetheless capable of stretching towards a destination that seems impossibly out of reach. Somewhere between where you are today and your impossible dream lies a journey filled with incredible lessons and stories worth sharing around the firepit.
In the quest to achieve your ambition, I offer you a few nuggets to keep, use, or toss along the way.
Failure is Inevitable
You will fail. Not completely – failure is only complete when you decide it is. From a quiver full of arrows, only some will hit the mark. The rest could be called failures, but I prefer to think of them as practice shots.
BHAG
Set your Big-Hairy-Audacious-Goal. Then set some more – realistic near-term goals. If your goal is to win that Oscar, you can’t get there without attainable, actionable goals. I wrote about this topic ten years ago in this series. Even Russell Crowe had to start somewhere. Take an acting workshop or class. Volunteer at your community theater. In the world of multifamily, that could mean signing up for classes wherever you can find them – Internal L&D departments, LinkedIn Learning, or in any of the countless free webinars made widely available by vendors across the industry.
Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
Embrace nervous anxiety. Lean in to it. Greatness was never found hiding in the blanketed cocoon of comfort. Willingly put yourself into uncomfortable situations. Reach out to someone you don’t know to ask for a call or video chat to talk about your project. You may be surprised by how often people who have achieved success are willing to share their time and stories with others on the way up.
Be True to You
Be accountable – to yourself and to someone else. There is a reason people hire personal trainers or life coaches. It’s because those people hold you accountable to your commitments. It’s incredibly hard to duck out of a 6 am workout if you know your trainer got up early to meet you at the gym. Accountability is key.
Repetition Builds Muscle Memory
Put in the reps. It can feel boring or pointless at times but in every endeavor, practice the reps that build up your skill, strength, and confidence. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a teenager when he started lifting weights and learned the fundamentals of completing and marking the reps. From Mr. Universe to Governor of California, the practice of repetition served him well.
Measure Everything
Measure and acknowledge your progress. It feels like fuel in your tank to have reached even the incremental markers of progress towards your bigger goal. Dave Ramsey has a debt snowball philosophy that helps people get out of credit card debt that involves paying off the smallest balance first. It feels good and it frees up cash to put towards the other debt. Celebrate your progress. Tell the world. Share it on your stories. It’s powerful stuff.
Celebrate the Win
When you achieve your big goal – take it in. Breathe the moment of accomplishment. Then – set your next goal even as you turn around and help someone else who is just getting started on theirs. For every person who heard you out, cheered you on, and celebrated the markers with you, pay it forward.
Congratulations – you’ve reached the upside.